The Coffee Shop Talk That Changed My Perspective on Crypto Coins
A couple of years ago I was in a small coffee shop, waiting for a friend. He was almost twenty minutes late but instead of apologising he pulled out his phone and excitedly showed me a cryptocurrency chart.“Here,” he said. This coin is up nearly 300% this month.
I laughed and said, “I know very little about crypto.
But that did not deter him.
For the next hour he talked about Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain technology and a handful of other coins I’d never heard of. “I only understood half of what he was saying, to be honest. But there was one thing I was interested in.
People from around the world were pouring real money into digital coins that didn’t have any physical existence.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it driving home.
A few days later I was too curious not to find out. I downloaded a crypto app, created an account and purchased my first coin.
It wasn’t life changing money I was investing. Enough to satisfy my curiosity.
For the first few weeks I was obsessed.
Every morning, before I brushed my teeth, I checked prices.
At lunch breaks I looked at prices again.
Then I went over them again before going to sleep.
The market went up and I felt clever.
I was nervous when it went down.
It was an emotional ride.”
Then one evening something happened that altered my whole perspective.
A friend once asked me a simple question.So what does that coin do, exactly?
I froze up.
I got no answer.
I knew what it demanded.
I knew its worth in the market.
I knew what influencers were saying on it.
But I had no idea at all why the coin was there.
That was an embarrassing realization.
I had invested money, in something I really didn’t understand.
That night I began doing some research.
I read articles, watched interviews, browsed through blockchain projects and learned that different crypto coins have different purposes.
That’s when I learned something most beginners overlook.
The value of crypto coins is not merely determined by their fluctuating prices.
Each one is an idea. That is why each one is important.
Bitcoin created the concept of money without a central authority.
Ethereum demonstrated that blockchain technology is capable of a lot more than payments.
Other coins were made for gaming, decentralized finance, cross-border payments, digital ownership, and a whole host of other innovations.
For the first time I stopped thinking about crypto coins as lottery tickets.
I started to think of them as tech.
The more I learned, the more I found myself fascinated by the industry.
Behind each serious crypto project were developers working on problems, communities building ecosystems and businesses trying new things.
Of course, not every coin is a winner.
Some are gone in a matter of months.
Others become worthless as technology advances.
But the projects that make it tend to have some value behind them: a goal.
That’s why it’s so important to understand crypto coins.
When people hear the word “crypto,” they usually think about profits and price charts.
But what they don’t always see is what’s going on underneath.
Many blockchain projects nowadays are trying to improve the way people transfer money, prove ownership, share data, and interact online.
The technology continues to push the envelope no matter how successful any one project is.
I’m kind of glad for my early mistakes looking back.
I would probably have lost interest a long time ago if I’d been interested just in making quick profits.
But those errors, on the other hand, taught me.
And the more I learned, the more I realised that the actual value of crypto is not in a single coin.
It is found in understanding why these coins are in existence in the first place.
Closing Thoughts
My first crypto experience was one of intrigue, excitement, and more than a little confusion. Just like many other newbies, I was initially interested more in the prices rather than the purpose.
But then I saw that crypto coins are much more than digital assets to trade on exchanges. They are ideas, technologies and communities working on new solutions to real world problems.
Next time you hear about a trending coin, don’t just ask what it might be worth tomorrow. Ask what it does. Why is it there? What value does it bring to the ecosystem?
Often those answers are so much more important than the price.
