Long before he was known by his current nickname, he'd follow tourists in the heat of central Africa, swinging an ice box and offering them a chilly bottle of Coca Cola or Fanta with a sugary smile to match.
But as chipper as his demeanor made him out to be, Crypto Shaolin calls this past work "frustrating." Not only was it meager pay, he had ambitions to rival his role models Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.
One of these drinks may have put him on that path, though, when by chance he passed a Coke to a man wearing a strangely worded shirt.
Curiosity piqued, Crypto Shaolin asked what it was all about. After all, he'd never heard of "HODL" before.
"[Crypto]'s the future," the man answered cryptically, adding:
"Are you here tomorrow?"
The stranger would go on to give him what amounted to an annual salary in exchange for his interest.
"I managed to escape poverty," Crypto Shaolin says of what came next.
The money, of course, wasn't in the usual form. The man presented Crypto Shaolin with ether, the cryptocurrency that powers ethereum, asking for only one thing in return: that he research the technology.
Without a laptop, this wasn't an easy task, but Crypto Shaolin would later find a cafe with internet that allowed him to continue his journey down the cryptocurrency rabbit hole.
"I was so amazed by what I've just discovered I could not sleep the next days," he said.
See more: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-bounty-hunting-is-offering-a-way-out-of-poverty/
If not for the market for crypto bounty have been infested by those who are only interested in cheap labour, its really a good source of making decent income. People who participated in the early days of bounties and airdrop of projects like Byteball or Electroneum can attest to this that it really worth their time and even after they finish the distribution and engaged in simple campaigns to be paid with their coin, its was something tangible to behold and other decent projects that have happened in the past. But not again today that out of 10 projects with bounties launched, 6 won't even bother to distribute the whatever they promise and 3 won't make it to the point of maturity where people can get the opportunity of cashing out their compensation for their time.
Reading the article, I realized that breaking out of poverty is actually dependent on the country the person is coming from. For someone in Asia, Africa, or Middle East, a $1000 is a whole lot of money that can change a life but the same thing cannot be said for average people in the US, Europe and other advanced countries of the world.