C24 – Part III: A 'Generational' Move

I was 13 or 14 when access to the internet became something that lots of 'normal' people could have. I instantly got it, this was a complete shift in accessibility of information AND the ability to participate in 'publishing' and sharing your own creations. It took me 6 years to go from there to building websites, then another 6 years or so to turn that into a career. Google launched in the middle of those 12 years. There were no university courses on web-design or digital marketing, no formal way of getting an education in 'doing cool stuff on the web', but it seemed obvious to me that this was going to change the world.

I'd like to think that if I was 13-14 when Bitcoin was first created, I'd have felt the same. The concept of cryptographically secure 'digital money' that made real use of the power of global, decentralized networks to capture value. A no-brainer. The reality of the digital-asset landscape as Bitcoin turned 16 over the weekend is not maybe what those early adopters may have imagined in 2008, but neither did the Internet in 2008 look like I imagined it to as I became a teenager.

This weekend I've been thinking a lot about those early adopters, the generation that got into Bitcoin early, that understood it and bought into the philosophical narrative rather than the trading charts. If I had gotten involved in digital assets in my teens, I'd now likely be turning ~30, which is an interesting time in life. [Generalizing] this is when a lot of people will start to think about growing-up: buying a house, getting married, having kids... cashing out of that smart move they made as kids. If this happens at scale, the dynamic of the whole sector changes.