Hey there steemit world. And what a world it is.
It’s rather exciting to see such an idea put into action, it makes me feel very small and very big simultaneously.
My name is Anna; I’m a to-be teacher and a children’s entertainer. I facepaint, I flit around in a fairy costume, and occasionally, I trip over imaginary rocks.
Less occasionally, and notably less interestingly, I study maths, Social Studies, English and how to teach people stuff.
I am a master procrastinator and I frequently lie that I am not.
My favourite thing in the world is words that make you wiggle your body in reaction.
I’m here to learn about crypto-currency. I’m also here to learn with other people like me, who know nothing about crypto except that they should know about crypto. I'm hoping there's a few of you still out there.
I may also like to to talk about other things I’m learning; for example new ways to paint some-one, or the sudden awareness of the constant battle I have with myself to shave my armpits, or maybe even some new sphere of knowledge that wraps round the old retinas.
But to start, I’d like to share where I am with learning about crypto.
So this all started about a month ago, when my boyfriend suddenly pulled into a void of absolutely devouring data regarding bitcoin.
Now it has to be mentioned here, that I am not a person who uses the internet to its full potential. I am one of those shameful, shameful creatures that prowls through Facebook feeds, mindlessly watching videos of things that will probably never ever be useful to me. For some reason it tends to be videos of either glamazons contouring their face or videos of sassy children being generally more talented and hilarious than I ever could hope to be.
I digress. The point is, I don’t do computer world.
For a while, I resisted his new obsession. Was jealous of it, even.
But I was thrust into this sudden urgent need to know about crypto when I was losing touch with an important relationship in my life.
And then, it became obvious as I picked up whiffs of my boyfriends perspiration as he furiously did the coding thing; making ‘wallets’ and reading graphs and talking incessantly about a ‘Matthew Silver’, that I too, needed to get on this train before it left.
So the first thing I did, (after my designated period of procrastination and cleaning other peoples kitchens needlessly) was jump on youtube and learn about bitcoin. There were a few documentaries that kind of loudly proclaimed how great bitcoin was, so it confirmed the suspicions I had about that, but it didn’t tell me how it actually worked.
By the third video, I started getting a feel for where bitcoin came from. The name 'Satoshi Nakamoto’ occurred, and my interest piqued. Who was this mysterious person that is changing the financial world as we know it? What other secrets is the internet hiding? Is he the faceless leader of a revolution?
My dramatic tendencies really started flaring up at this point; so I refocused by starting to write what I know down.
Ok. It went something like this:
There’s no middle man. No bank. No fees. No Inflation.
There’s only so many coins of bit. 21 million coins of bit, to be exact.
They are worth around 4 and a half grand in Australia now. Shit. That’s a lot of money.
There is a chain of blocks. A blockchain.
It arose from the ashes of the GFC in 2008. (*question: what other things have risen from the ashes of the GFC that I haven’t noticed yet??)
The blockchain is like a ledger, that tells the world who has what.
The ledger’s legitimacy is maintained by lots of people qualifying the ledger and agreeing on its data.
There are miners.
Miners solve maths problems.
Functions actually. Functions are the designated way to solve an equation.
But they’re the sort of functions that don’t go backwards.
Hmmmm. I’m starting to get confused at this point. So I drew some stuff that I thought might help me see the process better. I’ll attach that here. This is pretty much as much as I have learnt so far. 
I’m mulling on what I know at the moment, letting little pieces click into place.
That’s all I have to share for now, feel free to leave comments and help me figure this shit out. OR ask questions to help me figure this shit out.
Thanks for having a browse.