My name is Stuardo Rodríguez and I am a software developer. I am one of the survivors of the cataclysm known as Y2K and I am building a time machine. If I get you to read this message, it means that I am succeeding.
For those who don’t know about the prophecy of the Y2K, it said that computers would stop working at the end of the year 1999 according to the Gregorian calendar. At that time, computers used 2 digits to store dates. The end of the year 99 would start the year 00. All banking systems would crash when they can not calculate the payment dates. Credit cards would stop working. Even nuclear missiles could fire automatically that day. The worst was expected!
I live in a country where religion and the government keep us living in the obscurantism or the inquisition. The nation’s budget was given in its entirety as an offering to foreign shamans who promised to save the government’s computer systems. System consulting firms became millionaires overnight to save us from that certain death. The religious in the corners sold repentance tickets as Queen concert tickets. The end of time would be about to arrive. Thank you for sacrificing all the virgins that any foreign shaman demanded as an offering! Absolutely nothing happened. We survived!
Fast forwarding the story about 15 years in the future, a great friend invited me to know the world of Bitcoin. “Internet money, coins in your computer… magic words that you have to memorize to get the money mined.” Nothing he said made sense to me, even though I develop software for living. I completely ignored him. The next year, Bitcoin skyrocketed, he retired before his 40th birthday, and I looked like an idiot asking him to explain me how to put video cards in the refrigerator. It was too late for me, but not late for my curiosity. This time I would try to understand the technology behind it.
And when you see it, the awakening is impressive. Now I understand so much of what he shared with me but could not see. Now I am one of the crazy preachers in the corners, shouting at passersby about the blockchain word, making them uncomfortable with my monologues. Living in obscurantism, some things stick to you.
I have given lectures, I have been invited by different universities of the country to give talks to university and postgraduate students. I have been invited to give talks for bankers, financiers, investors. I have done everything except succeed in changing the world. Maybe I’m setting myself a very high goal, or maybe it’s because people lost 90% of their investments. I do not know. But what I was sure of was that by doing the same in all the presentations on Blockchain, I was not going to get it. I decided to change my focus.
Using Bitcoin as a value storage system is killing blockchain adoption. Let me repeat it to highlight the importance of those words. Using Bitcoin as a value storage system is killing blockchain adoption. It’s an unpopular idea that makes the maximalists look at me as the enemy. In the prophecy that was revealed to me, I saw people paying with money in blockchain, things as simple as a Pepsi in a store. Not hoarding, but really using it. How do I make people see the future that I saw? The only thing that occurred to me was to bring the future to the present and give people a taste of what it looks like.
I organized an event for people who did not know anything about Bitcoin. Not suitable for investors! My target audience was young people, students, small business entrepreneurs. Common people! Not national bank managers, or congressmen who say they will change laws for the use of blockchain, but do nothing. People who could see the world change, and be part of that change.
There were 2 talks. The first: I got a professor of a blockchain course at one of the most prestigious universities in my country to give a master class in a hall in a shopping center. I asked him to simplify many things so that my grandmother could understand. He was very impressed by the amount of questions the audience was asking. If people ask is because they understood and are interested. If nobody asks anything, it’s because nobody understood anything.
The second talk: my experiment. I wanted people to see what a world would be like where they could buy food and drinks in a shopping center paying with money in blockchain. I asked the audience: “who got bored with the theory and wants to see this in real life?” Everyone raised their hands. Next to me there was a saleswoman with her phone in one hand and a beer ready to deliver in the other. I pressed a button to see my phone in the projector, I asked the seller the name of her EOS account, I asked the price of the beer, EOS 0.74, I made the transfer, she confirmed to receive it in a couple of seconds and he gave me my beer. “Ladies and gentlemen, that was blockchain. Thank you very much for attending this presentation. Any questions?”.
The following was an hour and a half of questions from the audience. One thing was the theory, and another to see it live. While people were asking questions, I showed them a video on screen how to download the app for their phone and create their account; another person was there receiving cash or credit card payments to buy EOS, and then they would buy buffalo wings and beer paying with EOS. While people were buying their food, we continued with questions from the public. We managed to create 28 new EOS accounts. We received Q1,300 (currency of my country), approximately USD $ 147. We sold EOS 49.0025 to the public, of which EOS 22 was sold in food and beers. That for me, was much more successful for the adoption of blockchain than all the previous talks I’ve done.
“Whenever I listened to, like Bitcoin and stuff, I thought it was something they use in Europe or in China, where they are technologically more advanced, but being able to try it and use it in a day-to-day purchase made me understand it well. It was like a scene from a movie of the future”, was what one of the assistants told me. “¿Like from the Jetsons?” I asked, but she saw me with a face, making me understand that she did not understand the reference. Maybe I’m too old.
Maybe generations that lived before the Y2K are still afraid of a 2nd Apocalypse, the one that could really destroy the economy if we trust computers too much. Maybe generations that don’t even know what the Y2K was are the ones that are going to be using blockchain daily instead of hoarding it. Maybe I’m too old to try to change the world, but I feel that I’m creating this machine that helps me travel through time, by bring the future to the present. To live now how the future is going to be, because that’s how it’s going to be.
For more photos of the event: https://photos.app.goo.gl/DZnAKVKHABAKTSy16
The event wouldn't be possible without the help of:
- EOS Nation, who donated EOS for the cause.
- Meet.One, who donated the EOS accounts of all participants.
- Essential Network, who helped with the place and logistics, and accepted EOS as payments for their products.
- LC Eventos, who donated the furniture for the event, and accepted EOS as payment for their food and drinks.
- Lynx Guatemala, who was in charge of accepting fiat for EOS.
If you enjoyed the article, EOS donations are welcome to my EOS account [stuardodevel]. Those donations will help fund the next meetup. Claps are OK too.