So I've managed to make it this far by more or less ignoring it like most people do. I did have some involvement in the last decade but it never amouted to anything. I remember trying out the bit faucets/mining 5 years ago. I still had no real idea what I was doing. Only that the profits as the time were barely more than the electricity needed to run my computer. So I quickly forgot about it.
A few weeks ago I was selling something online and the buyer offered to pay in BTC. I told him that I never almost nothing about BTC. How to turn it into USD, how to move it...Etc. He insisted that it was the only way he could pay me. He was the only person interested in buying what I was selling so I ended up saying ok.
I had to let him explain the process to me as best I could. How to get a wallet. How to use the private and public keys. He would occasionally forget he was talking to a crypto noob and would start using terms and steps like it was common knowledge. I'd have to stop him and ask him to explain.
So he sends me the BTC and I have to wait 30 minutes for the BTC gods to greenlight the transaction or something another. Finally, he says it's been approved by 2 BTC gods and that is ok enough. Now I have to take steps into exchanging it for USD, which isn't really that straightforward either.
I was lucky enough that the seller said his friend is always trying to buy BTC and he would hook us up. Ok, so now I have to reverse everything I had done previously. His friend was nice and patient too as I tried to make sure everything was right before I sent the BTC to his key. Eventually I do get my $ via Paypal and all is good.
I was thinking about how one ten thousandth of a bitcoin is equal to whole dollars now. And that got me to thinking about how I may have some crypto laying around that has increased a value a lot. I'll save that journey for part 2.