March 30, 2026 ·
Let's talk crypto. I believe to have made my first blockchain transaction in 2017. It's hard to recall the precise moment, but I believe it to be in 2017. I recall it to be in the kitchen of my Houston apartment one evening after work. In my vague-about-it memory, what I am semi-certain about is that my crypto tinkers started as an ode to Ed Thorp while reading his book A Man for All Markets which had come out earlier that year. I was amazed that such a person existed, and that his book was easy enough to understand for an outsider and beginner like me. The book is very appropriately titled because Ed isn't just about one kind of market, or more broadly, one kind of dynamic. What he describes in the book is relentless pursuit of understanding how information, money, computation, and numbers work in the real world. It's further mind blowing that Ed worked with the great Claude Shannon to create the first wearable computer. True titan of industry, Ed.
Ed's multidimensional understanding and explanation of information, money, computation, and numbers had me hooked. I've always told people for years that my introduction to markets was crypto-and-information-first, traditional money second. The meaning and significance of that statement flies under the radar and remains undetected, I think. What I mean when I say I learnt markets crypto-first is that I learnt information and money to be innately computational and programmable. This of course was evident to people like Ed Thorp or Claude Shannon from the get go, but has made for an interesting set of reactions otherwise.
Crypto is a dirty word in the 2020s just like oil was a dirty word in the 2010s. To be pro-crypto is to be some kind of an ignorant person that denies climate change or something like that. This used to mystify me in the 2010s but no longer does. I now know that innovation has always and perpetually been treated like that. So now I expect it. This isn't to say that criticisms are to always be ignored, but that innovation in its time is hard to make sense of versus in retrospect.
I'm thinking about all this because I recently added products to my store and it has been crypto-only until now. I then started thinking about wallets, credit cards and dashboards. Once again, I am not anti-fiat or anti-credit-cards; I just happened to be crypto-first because it's easier to set up and program; just like back in 2017. I wrote day before yesterday that Stripe annoyed me with their onboarding process but Square has been phenomenal to deal with. So starting today I am also accepting credit cards in my store. Coincidentally, Square is allowing Bitcoin payments payable in USD starting today, too. Would you look at that.
I also mentioned developing an artsy dashboard yesterday. So I have created a tiny graph under my profile picture on the home page. It tracks an aggregated view count of this website and contributions on GitHub. It starts off as a single, tidy little blinking dot; and each day here on out it will add metrics for the previous day; showing a rolling 14 days worth of trends for me and my visitors to reflect on.
Crypto-first all over again.
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