TL;DR: The cryptocurrency world was buzzing last night as the notorious meme Gym Friend (Kyri Andreou) appeared live on the YouTube program, Collin’ It Like It Is. The beefy 62-year-old was a wonderful sport about his newly found fame, and admitted to not being particularly tech-savvy. The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community urged him to download a wallet, flash an address, so they could tip Gym Friend. At press time, $153 worth of BCH was sent in appreciation. Andreou asked the funds to be donated to a Venezuelan and South Sudan-oriented charity, eatBCH.

Bitcoin Cash Community Donates to Gym Friend

Happy warriors. That’s the default mode of peer-to-peer electronic cash system enthusiasts. Fun, laughter, self-deprecation can be found at meetups, in Telegram chat rooms, Reddit forums, and Twitter. It’s not at the expense of weightier topics and deeper dives into Game Theory, economics, finance, mathematics, computer science, philosophy. No. Rather, meme-culture and living in absurd times are noticed by the P2P cash community and celebrated toward a real, substanitive purpose.

No better illustration of that convoluted and seeming contradiction is the Gym Friend phenomenon. By now, the story is well-known. Kyri Andreou was living his life in relative obscurity, part of a Malaysian equity firm with a mild connection to blockchain. His passion is taking great physical care of his body, and he’s got the results to prove it. Someone, somewhere found an innocent enough picture with Andreou posing with a BTC maximalist’s lady friend (she wasn’t with the toxic maxi then) on her Instagram account.

The maxi, Blockstream CSO Samson Mow, is a paid BTC troll who revels in toxicity. He spends a great deal of time entering threads, spreading rumors, ministering purity tests. He’s also, frankly, mousey, slight, ill-defined, and has a penchant for children’s toys. Mow’s lady friend evidently purchased such a toy for him, to his delight, and commemorated his reaction by photographing the moment. Mow’s coy feminine grin and coveting embrace was instantly meme-able — a near-perfect encapsulation of a boy-man, a mannish boy obsessed with nonsense, triviality. HODL, Lambo moon, Number Go Up boys personified.

Fun Demonstration of BCH’s Primary Use Case

Scolds find the entire episode to be a giant waste of time. They even chastize ecosystem reporters for covering the story at any level. The smear is to say it’s “tabloid” in preference to CEO interviews and covering the latest press releases from legacy financial regulators. While peer-to-peer electronic cash system proponents are keen to the ways of corporate finance and government agencies’ doings, they’re also focused on adoption and its implications for folks who are not executives or Wall Street hotshots.

At the 1 hour, 25 minute mark with Gym Friend, Enstad, for example, demonstrates how relatively easy it is to create a non-custodial wallet for BCH. Enstad briefly flashes an address QR code and goes about explaining, educating, both Andreou and assembled live stream viewers about how the process is navigated, including that of employing a block explorer — not trivial stuff to those learning about them for the first time.

Palpable WOWs appeared to escape from Gym Friend as Enstad announced $100 was raised in mere seconds as a result — no bank, no KYC, no central authority, no crazy fees … and from anywhere in the world. It’s not going too far to assume Andreou had never considered these implications in their immediate forms, had never seen them put in practice. Quite a lot of modern finance is future-focused, potential oriented, graphs and charts. And yet here he was being hosted live on a stream dedicated to his new celebrity, raising a significant amount of money in no time, and dramatically impacting the lives of desperate people literally in another hemisphere.

Enstad also took Gym Friend through the work of Venezuelan and South Sudan charity, eatBCH. The group feeds people by taking advantage of the frictionless, fast, inexpensive, P2P power of Bitcoin Cash. eatBCH is careful to audit funds, keeping donors aware of what and when donated monies are used. Andreou insisted whatever was raised through Enstad’s demo be sent to the charity. So while the dismissals of Gym Friend were used in favor of reporting on speculative price calls and rocketing market capitalizations that very evening, Enstad and Andreou were revolutionarily making people smile and helping to fill bellies.

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DYOR: CoinSpice is your home for just spicy crypto things. We’re not affiliated with any cryptocurrency project or token. Each published piece is intended for information purposes only, not investment advice and not in the hope of impacting speculative markets. There are plenty of trading sites and coin-specific advocacy journals out there, we’re neither. CoinSpice strives for rigorous accuracy in our reporting. Information presented here is contingent usually on a host of factors, and the ecosystem moves fast — prices change, projects change, and at warp speed. Do your own research.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.