Saturday, April 25, 2020

I've just finished my sixth week of being under lockdown, and I'm starting to forget what normal life was like.

Since I have some extra time on my hands, last week I finally read my first book by Murray Rothbard: "What Has Government Done to Our Money?"

My quickie review is that it's short but packs a punch. It taught me more about the relatively recent history of money and its evolution. It also reinforced my view that the only way any cryptocurrency is going to succeed is if people use it as a medium of exchange.

Which is why I've been excited to see the recent growth of blockchain.poker.

In case you don't know what that is, it's a site that allows you to play poker for real money without signing up using an email, or phone number, or any other identifying information. You can simply choose a login and password, deposit some Bitcoin Cash (or play with the 100 satoshis they give you for free!), and start playing instantly. The gameplay is great and the design is clean and easy on the eyes.

The site has been around for a couple of years now. In that time I've watched the team continue to iterate and fix bugs and release new features. I remember when I first started playing back in 2018, it was usually hard to find anyone to play with. The tables mostly sat empty. But over the last few months, the number of users has grown dramatically. Now I never have a problem finding a game, and whether you want to play for just a few satoshis, or sit down at a table with 10 BCH at a time (shout out to the player known as Economic Freedom), there's a table for you.

If you're not a big poker player and just want to try it for fun. I suggest you play in one of the many daily tournaments. I've seen almost two hundred people playing at a time, and plenty of people host smaller tournaments with relatively small entry fees with guaranteed prizes up to 1 BCH.

People have been wondering what the killer app for Bitcoin Cash will be, but it's always been the same thing: digital cash. The recent rise of blockchain.poker tells me people are slowly catching on to what makes BCH the real magic internet money.

For me, it's evidence that if you keep building and improving on a solid idea, the users will eventually come. Perhaps the best part is how organic the growth feels. Take it from someone who has been playing (and losing) there since 2018. I've witnessed first hand how much the site has grown, and there seems to now be a real community forming around this poker site. Just look at all the people who were playing using Bitcoin Cash the other night when I started writing this article (there are even more tables but it didn't all fit in one screen):

The second project I want to highlight in this article is none other than read.cash. It's only been six months since this platform went live, but in that short period of time, it has established itself as an important part of the BCH ecosystem. I think I'm most excited by the recent addition of the read.cash fund. It's an interesting experiment. Will people donate to the fund as if the content being generated here is a public good? Will they support writers and creators as well as a Bitcoin Cash business? I guess we're about to find out.

Another feature I'm really interested in is the new voting mechanism. I want to see how it helps curate content on the front page and provide another form of feedback for writers like me. As many of you know, before read.cash, I used to write articles like this on yours.org and honest.cash. But believe me when I say that of the three projects, read.cash has given me the most reason to be optimistic. The team behind this project is constantly innovating, and if you're someone who likes to write, this platform offers you an amazing opportunity. It isn't just a chance for you to earn a little extra money. It's an opportunity to get honest feedback on your writing in real time. I like to think of this site as a free market for content. Whenever I post a new article, I'm able to see within a day or two whether or not the content I created was desired by the market depending on how many views or tips I received.. This will be my 72nd published article on this platform, and I am proud to be able to say that every article I've posted has earned at least one tip. And I appreciate every penny I get. Imagine one day if millions of users are using this site. If even just a small fraction of those people give you a penny each, it can be a significant sum.

I look forward to watching read.cash grow over time just as blockchain.poker did. Projects take time to catch on, but if you keep building and improving upon a solid idea, I believe that the users will eventually come. If you're reading this and believe in the power of peer to peer electronic cash, sign up for read.cash and join the community. Reddit isn't popular because the content is amazing, it's because they have millions of users. The more users this site has, the more noise it will make, attracting the notice of writers and journalists who want to see what all the hoopla is about.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading as usual, and I hope to see more of you join the read.cash community.