Once upon a time there was a guy named Bob.......Parts 1 & 2 here:https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9844477Part 3 here:https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9850161Intermezzo
Gentle reader.
The best Greek tragedies are the darkest ones. They take us deep into a world where we can see everything happen before it happens, and so our primary emotion as we watch the characters choose their actions is one of disbelief. Of horror. This is where the darkness comes from as we watch the tragedy unfold. We know it is completely unnecessary. That at each moment, any of the actors – so much larger than life as we watch them – could step back, choose differently, and avoid their fate.
In these tragedies the chorus is usually silent the first two acts. They are – like you gentle reader – facing the stage, watching things unfold. It is only when the protagonists start making inexplicable choices, the choices that will doom them, that one by one, the ragged and unkempt men of the chorus begin to turn towards the audience, raising their voices against the voices of the actors, bemoaning what is occurring, lashing out at hidden forces that the actors can apparently not see. As the third act thickens this becomes overwhelming, and the sea of voices from both stage and the chorus becomes a din of chaotic foreshadowing in real time as the actors plunge towards self-destruction.
This is where we are, isn’t it, dear reader?
Watching Bob, and David, and Paul, and the Salamander - and everyone they will drag with them - self-destruct, in real time?
And the riveting horror of it, that it does not need to be happening, but it is? Right before our eyes?
Gentle reader. I shall try to keep my voice low. But I have turned from the stage now. I am talking to you.Part 3: Schizophrenia (continued)From the start, Bob said over and over again,
never fall in love with a coin.
Sell a little every day he would say.
40% profit is good. 60% is good. In the days when our pumps were working like a well-tuned Detroit diesel he would greet us foot soldiers as we arrived in the chat,
howya doin today man. you selling a little today? Don’t be greedy man. Put some small sells up there.In the early days he was full of wisdom like this. He was genuinely trying to teach us how to make money. Bob was an old school pumper, this was what he did. Of course, his words mainly fell on deaf ears. Few of us were there to learn how to trade. We were young jihadists looking for stacks of BTC. How do you not fall in love with a coin who has drawn you in with her smooth legs, has her hand around your stack and is stroking it to a size it has never been before? How do you pull yourself away from something like that?
The problem was, if you didn’t pull out, you were guaranteed to end up holding bags at the top. And that started happening in the plays. During the XST pump everyone could have been out with 200% profit but guys were still pushing, building support at more than 300%, and when the music stopped (those endless days of waiting for Mintpal to launch V2) many in the group were left holding large bags at the top. The BitSwift pump. 400% gains. But again, bagholders at the top. During the four months between August and December, the one guy who made the most money in the group was the one guy who was never there. He simply entered and exited when Bob said so. When asked how much money he had made during those months, he responded with his laconic southern drawl, well, more money than most americans make in a year I suppose …
But we figured all of this out too late, didn’t we, my former brothers-in-arms?
I know you are listening to me. You are out there in the darkness of this forum, all of you. Outcast ronin. Striking up alliances of convenience and revenge.
You remember those times. 200% profit in a couple days seemed like nothing. We were after stacks. We wanted to be like Paul and Bob. We wanted to prove ourselves to be ballers, so we left 300% in our rear view mirrors and threw up high support walls and ate up bids to make new floors. We wanted that thumping, pulsing feeling in the chat of saying, i just put 2 btc right below you. i’ll take it to 890. gotta go out for a bit but I’m leaving support at 1750. ok, I’m ready to push. who’s with me?We were not playing it like Bob, selling on the way up. We were not playing it like Paul, who would quickly arbitrage his pushes on a different exchange to reload his stacks. We wanted to be like them. But we were not doing it like them.
We grew angry. We felt like we were being team players, putting up high support, getting dumped into. And then it seemed like ‘the plan’ – whatever that was - would suddenly be over, and we were off to a new coin. And no one was telling us what ‘the plan’ was to get out of the last coin, how we were to get rid of those bags.
There was a schizophrenia growing in the group as well, and this was between the leadership styles of Bob and Paul. This – like everything else here – is only clear in hindsight. It started in XST, and ended in Amsterdam.
Paul was cerebral, and the group was taking on coins that had increasingly interesting tech possibilities behind them. Paul liked talking to the devs, meditating on the ideas and possibilities behind them. Bob on the other hand was only interested in the tech insofar as it gave us a marketing angle over other coins. Tech that could translate into stacks.
You dear reader – I know you. I know what just happened in your head. Paul is the good guy. And Jesus, that Bob, what a scumbag.
But are you so innocent, dear reader? You have never held a coin and were frustrated that the dev seemed unable or uninterested in communicating its tech to the world? A coin that could have, should have been worth two, three times as much?
You have, dear reader. I know you.
You are not Paul alone. You are Bob as well.
Know thyself. Our pumps would take a few weeks to plan, take positions, establish PR, then move the coin up the charts with all the normal tools - forum hype, tweets, everything that would set the magic merry-go -round of hope and dreams in motion. And what ended up happening was this: by that third or fourth week, in XST or Swift, when 200% and 300% were far below us, out of memory, like an ugly girl we once dated, Paul and Bob - our leaders – would be on completely different pages.
Psychologically, and financially, Bob would be on his way out of the coin. But Paul would be just getting started. He was, after all, a crypto idealist.
This proved to be fatal in BitSwift.
Paul fell in love with the coin.
Ahhh. Little Bitswift.
My apologies dear reader. I know you want to hear all about little BitSwift, and how she came to be. We are almost there.
But to understand how BitSwift was born, we had to first understand the world she was being born into. The bagholders. The growing schism within the group. The leaders. These are the people who created little BitSwift. These are the people who profited from her being born.
I must rest. I am not sure what the muses will speak of next, Amsterdam or little BitSwift. The death of the group. Or the glory of Paul.
Somewhere out there the ungodly, bastard child BitBay awaits her entrance. With Lin and David and Steve and Bob and the Salamander and Halo and thousands of fake BTC and Holly from Taiwan.
I must rest.
I must rest.