On the 5th of August 2014 I bought 400 ETH in the Ethereum pre-sale. Earlier that year I’d read an interview with Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin, in Wired magazine. While reading the article I realised that the idea of doing contracts on a blockchain was a good one. I’d seen Bitcoin rise from a crazy idea 5 years before, to a viable form of nerd money. But never bought in. So when the pre-sale came along. I got $150 (AUD) together (what I could afford at the time), bought bitcoin via a broker by sending a bank cheque (seems so primitive now, seemed so underground and risky then.), and bought some ETH in the pre-sale. I didn’t know what would happen. I knew it would grow, I didn’t know by how much, I recorded my password, and then forgot about it, and put my thoughts elsewhere. I’d made many good predictions about ideas that take off, but this was the first time I’d laid money on it.
Every now and then over the next months I would check on CoinGecko what my ETH was worth. When my investment went up to $5000 I decided to try to access my wallet. I’d downloaded “Ethereum Wallet” A full node wallet still under development. I put in my wallet (public key), put in my password and received a “Wrong Password” error. I was shocked, humbled, worried. 18 years of being a computer tech, and I knew how to record a password. Especially when it came to financial matters. It didn’t makes sense. I made enquiries into password recovery, and then I just let it go. In reality it was $150 down the tubes. A night out. The rest was in my head. A missed opportunity. Let it go, don’t get bitter. Keep living from job to job. Fixing computers, mixing bands in bars, paying rent, cutting costs, maximising income. Tolerating unpleasant people, and situations. Every $10 counted.
Over the next couple of months, I would occasionally try to sort out the password issue.
And then earlier this year, I got a message from one of my IT clients asking about VPNs.He wanted to access Coinbase. Coinbase is geo blocked in Australia, and you need a VPN to buy and sell on it. We had a conversation about Crypto, I told him I had 400 ETH that I couldn’t get access to. He told me that it was now worth $120000. I gulped. Couldn’t believe it. As it was going up he would tease me with updates about the growing funds that I could not access.
But an idea had grown in my mind. What if I didn’t have the wrong password? What if it was just that stupid beta software. Well I downloaded a newer version. That version would error, and error, and error, until I realised I needed to let it download the entire 35GB Ethereum blockchain. I left my laptop running for days to download the entire chain. I tried again, it accepted my password. I had access to 400 ETH!! But the next issue was that stupid Wallet couldn't let me send. By the time I had accessed it it was early June. Ethereum was about to peak!!
Over the next couple of weeks I started experimenting with how it worked. I discovered myethereumwallet.com and could now access my wallet without having to download the full blockchain. I experimented with moving my ETH around, sending it to exchanges, sending it to other wallets, making trades, turning it into FIAT so I could buy a holiday. I had roughly $150000AUD of ethereum. I was no longer living hand to mouth. I literally no longer knew myself. I could buy a fancy car if I wanted. All sorts of stuff. But what I really wanted was to never live on the bones of my arse again. Long term financial security and comfort was what i wanted. What I was about to discover in July though was that what goes up, must come down. TBC