Life used to be different for "Crypto Shaolin."
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/