One adventure leads to another. I met Jeongwoon at a travel awards show, and she invited me to her event.
What does crypto currency and self-worth have in common? Belief in value. The core to any currency, is belief that has value. In order for humans to feel self-worth, they must believe they have value. This train of thought came to me recently when I attended a seminar on crypto currency, and became involved in a discussion with a headhunter who brought up how many of his clients place their internal, self-value, based on their monetary earnings.
Crypto Currency Background
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are a hot topic, with the range from people becoming millionaires to others (like me) still in the baffled zone. My adventures brought me to an Ir En Vivo (which I learned later means Livestream in Spanish) event to learn about crypto currency. This seemed a perfect adventure to overcome my lack of knowledge around a big topic (as well as a way to address some of the fears I have around money).
While I do feel I know a bit more about bitcoin and how crypto currency works, there is no way I am going to attempt to explain it here. I am not expert enough to distill it into a few paragraphs. Even the experts aren’t able to do that! (Check the end of this post for resources as a start of your own journey into learning more.) An excellent piece of advice though is, because crypto currency is still volatile, “don’t invest any more than you can afford to lose.”
Crypto Currency Lingo
Here are a few of the words I wrote down to look up later. Maybe they will spark your interest too.
- Crypto Currencies: Bitcoin, Neo, Bitcoincash, ZCash, and Monero
- Ethereum, Ether Tokens
- Smart Contracts
- ICO (Initial Coin Offerings)
- Cryptographic Hash (“digital fingerprint”)
- Mining
- Infinite Minting
- Satoshi Nakamoto – originator of Bitcoin, read the white paper
- Blockchain technology
Crypto Currency analogies
“Hey buddy, got a spare stone to lend?”
One story that was presented helped me understand how the new money system works. A long time ago, the people of the Isle of Yap in Micronesia would sail about a hundred miles to quarry stones into large coins. They would bring these stone coins back to their island, and they became part of their wealth. Since they couldn’t easily carry the stones around, they came to represent value. In the small village, oral tradition were how the records of transactions were kept – similar to how crypto currency records are kept on decentralized computer records. Hearing this story reminded me of how the ancient Mayans used cacao beans for money (so, literally, money grew on trees!) and I wondered if the parallel worked because in this case, the “coins” could and were eaten.
Here is Mike Mazier telling the story of stone money on the Isle of Yap (click to IG link)
Next to the jaguar skins are two loads of cacao beans, used to pay tribute to the Aztecs
Cacao bean currency (from the Choco Museum at Jaques Torres Chocolates)
An important point about any money is that you have to have BELIEF that the currency has value. The dollar was started as representation of gold. What is gold but shiny rock? It has value because we humans place it there. Bitcoin first started having value when 10,000 bitcoins were used to buy two pizzas. (By the way, that 10,000 would now translate into approximately – depending on the day – 90 million dollars!)
Belief in my value
The story about the Yap islanders says the part of the original value of the rocks came from the time and labor it took to sail to the other islands, quarry the stone, carve it and sail back with it. An exchange for a person’s labor and time. Much like we place value on our labor and time in exchange for wages. As a culture, we place emphasis on a person’s value based on their work and income level. This value on money has come to relate to our own sense of value, of being paid for what we think we are worth.
This, in a sense, has become a social contract. What I BELIEVE about my self worth is based on our connection to money. “I’m only as good as my last achievement or success” or “I am my job title.” Our careers reinforces that we are “somebody,” we are what we ‘do’ instead of who we ‘are.’
So what happens when there is a sudden job loss, sometimes out of one’s control? Think about it. When you first meet someone, the normal thing that’s asked is what’s your name and what do you do for work. We become our job title. For me, transitioning from years in the corporate world – where I had a job description and worked for big name companies – to being an entrepreneur…I experienced a loss of my own worth. It didn’t help that I was “devalued” in my career category (meaning my expertise were no longer needed in my industry of magazine ad sales since I was not a “digital native”). It felt like I went through the five stages of grieving. I came to terms, from the cultural norm of self-esteem depending on outward measures of value to a point of self-acceptance, of believing my own value. “I am worthwhile because I exist. I am I, and I am alive.”
While it makes sense to place a monetary value on things like products and services, it doesn’t make sense to place monetary value to determine your currency as a human being. Bitcoin and the other crypto currencies will struggle or succeed as the belief in their value shifts. Just like humans will struggle or succeed as the belief in their intrinsic value shifts. Maybe that’s the lesson of this adventure for me…to value myself for more than a lost job title (Advertising Sales Director) or the gain of a new one (CEO of an online business, Adventure Wednesdays LLC). What do you think? Should I just introduce myself this way “Hi, I’m Stacey and I like adventure!”? What’s your future – will you be earning cryptocurrency to establish your self-worth? or will you introduce yourself, sans what you do or your job title?
RESOURCES:
(Note – I am not an affiliate of any of these companies/people, nor recommending the following, just letting you know the resources I discovered, most through Jeongwoon. Any use is at your own choice/risk)
Ledger Nano S (tip: do not buy from eBay etc, buy direct. This ensures safety of product)
“Banking on Bitcoin” (Netflix documentary)
Bitcoin, blockchains, and the future of money https://youtu.be/A-L2M0l5dEY
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