Today marks the 10th anniversary of an important blog post. It was the announcement that I started accepting Bitcoin for paragliding tandem flights. I had interest in the nascent internet currency for a couple of months prior to that. And I felt that what was missing were places where people could spend their coins.
Only very few people came to me and wanted to pay a flight with BTC. But since I went full in on BTC for my paragliding hobby, I convinced a couple of customers to send me BTC instead of a bank transfer. For some of them it was the first time. It’s cool in this regard, that you can buy BTC on every train ticket machine. Unfortunately nobody paid with Lightning so far, despite announcing a special in 2019.
Many things have happened in the last decade. In the meantime lots of people call it digital gold, and being mainly for investing. While for me it is still primarily the best, most reliable, censorship resistant, easy to use form of money. I never really liked credit cards, but seeing how much more secure and reliable BTC is for payments, I cancelled my last credit card seven years ago, and I never looked back.
Through Bitcoin I learned so much about the nature of money, and the shortcomings of our current financial system. And a year ago I started as Blockchain Engineer at SEBA Bank, turning my longtime hobby into my job.
Every time I buy something, I check out where I can pay with Bitcoin. While still not as abundant as I would like, the number of places that accept BTC have grown tremendously over the years. Some of these purchases, I would not have been able to afford, without the value of BTC raising in an unprecedented manner. But I still value the freedom and self-determination that BTC gives more than the wealth.
- Gold is the money of kings
- Silver is the money of gentlemen
- Barter is the money of peasants
- Dept is the money of slaves
- Bitcoin is the money of sovereign people
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