Hello bitcointalk, To accompany the upcoming public launch of my website. I wanted to give bitcoin talk a proper backstory on me. Some of you know parts of my story, but for those new to the community or not familiar with me I hope this may be helpful and instructive.
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My Journey With BitcoinWritten for bitcoin talk, approved for public release.
Authored by Eclipse
Drafted 9/3/2023
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My Story:It was June 2016, I first heard about bitcoin while on a hiking trip preparing for a two-week expedition to Philmont New Mexico. In the hot summer sun, an older scout in the troop explained to me he had been gifted a bitcoin several years ago as a gift for finding a bug in a website. I wasn't really aware what he was talking about, he told me when he got the bitcoin it was worth only a few dollars and now it had appreciated to a few hundred dollars. It was surreal and strange to me, and it piqued my curiosity.
I forgot about the experience until a spring day in early May 2017. I was sitting in the school cafeteria trawling through reddit when I noticed this strange advertisement off in the corner of my screen. It was a crudely drawn wizard holding a staff, I ended up clicking on the advertisement and was brought to r/bitcoin. After looking over some of the posts, memes and literature I realized that these people were talking about the thing my friend had mentioned to me a year or more earlier, the magic anomaly bitcoin. These people were discussing a new monetary system. A system that was so transformative from the one I grew up with and had come to know. I found myself reading up on bitcoin, trying to understand it and figure out what all the buzz was about.
Bitcoin was on a tirade at the time. It had rapidly climbed from under a thousand dollars to now taking out its previous all-time high. Every day I spent reading up on it, it was up another several percentage points.
These were the days of Cryptonick, Bitconnect, Trevon James and the other clowns of the time. The space was very underdeveloped and the whole thing felt like more of a joke than some sort of transformative international hyper secure virtual currency.
I had about $10,000 to my name at the time, this was the result of saving and gifts accumulated over the years. After obsessively reading about bitcoin for about three weeks I decided I wanted to put my life savings into bitcoin. One bitcoin was trading at about $2560 at the time. I gave a PowerPoint presentation to my family as to why bitcoin would ascend into the stratosphere, soliciting approval and investment. The presentation was great, but it did not illicit investment capital. My family talked me out of the idea citing bitcoin as a tulip poplar or some sort of Ponzi scheme. They talked my idea down and told me to just save my money or invest in the stock market.
Two months passed since then, now it’s august. The price of bitcoin was on a tirade, up nearly 50% since May. Resting at a comfortable $3400. I was very disappointed in my family for talking me out of what was potentially the best investment decision of my life. I decided to break off on my own and pour my money into bitcoin while I still could. I set up a Coinbase account, sent the money from my bank account, and bought a full coin for $3666 about a week later. Over the next year I would increase this investment to about 1.8 - 2 bitcoin and a half dozen Ethereum at around $250 each
I told my friends at school about bitcoin, how it was the future of money and would disrupt world economies. They laughed at me and told me I was delusional. I told my math teacher at school about how bitcoin would bring economic prosperity to billions of people, he laughed at me and told me bitcoin was a scam. He told me I was stupid for buying bitcoin. I told my coach that I bought bitcoin and that it was the future of money. He told me it was a tulip bulb and that I should sell it immediately. I even gave a PowerPoint presentation at school about how bitcoin was predestined to hit $100k per coin. The class could not fathom the idea of a digital decentralized money. Half thought I was nuts, the other half thought I was a genius.
This whole-time bitcoin was on a tirade. Smashing over $10,000 per coin. Despite what everyone was telling me, that I was a fool, an idiot, and that bitcoin was a scam. I was making more money than my teachers, friends and family combined.
Bitcoin hit $20,000 per coin while I was eating lunch in the cafeteria. All I could do was stand up, compulsively refreshing the screen on my Coinbase account, seeing thousands of dollars being added to my portfolio per second. My friends seated at the table around me were awestruck, they had never seen so much money made so quickly.
From December 2017 through December 2018 bitcoin lost 85% of its value. I don’t remember selling anything or taking even an ounce of profit. I just remember buying more bitcoin at random intervals.
From 2018 through 2019 I was involved in a number of hard forks like zclassic and bitcoin private. I was involved in the Litecoin halving, I oversaw numerous alt-coin projects that all ended up being scams where I lost my entire investment. I once gambled on duck dice and lost 7 ETH in about 30 seconds (this was about $1000 at the time).
I was beyond optimistic for bitcoin’s future, but I was greedy and desiring the largest possible bitcoin bags I could get. For those desiring the same, you will never have enough bitcoin.
From 2019 - 2020 I was buying Ethereum for $100 a piece, had over 1.3 bitcoin even after all the scams and mal investment. I also had a large sum of binance coin and Litecoin. In October 2020 I liquidated this entire portfolio and put everything I had into XRP. I thought XRP would be rolled out to replace the dollar and that the pandemic was the “great reset” of the financial system. I was thinking about five to seven years in advance. I was not aware that this was just the start of the financial transformation.
Bitcoin went to the stratosphere, ethereum performed even better than bitcoin, binance coin did a 100x.
At peak 2021 prices this portfolio would have been worth about half a million dollars. Instead, by going all into XRP I was looking at about one hundred thousand dollars.
During this whole ordeal in 2021 purchased a Denarium dove coin on eBay for $250. I would study its hologram for hours at a time, take it on long walks during the pandemic and contemplate the nature of money and the future of bitcoin. I even took this coin with me on camping and backpacking trips. I would later take a picture of this coin with a 2008 DSLR I salvaged from a yard sale and make my very first poster out of it. This poster was printed in a local print shop and sold for bitcoin in thirty-three editions on bitcoin talk. It represents my first contribution to the collectable's community.
From 2021 - 2022 I would go on to trade, photograph and collect physical bitcoin and physical cryptocurrency artifacts. I converted much of my remaining bitcoin into collectables throughout this time as collectables were experiencing a tremendous bull market. I would spend my hours hunting down original 2013 lealanas, dreaming of when I could buy a silver casascius, and learning the eccentricities of bitcoin usage. I released three editions of posters, learned photography and built one of the most robust networks of trade bitcoin talk has ever seen. I founded eclipse payments from a spare room. Originally my intention was to provide bitcoin lightning network payments solutions to companies hence the "payments" part. I since switched to solely focus on crypto storage instruments.
I have met so many interesting people on bitcoin talk. Sold tens of thousands of dollars' worth of physical bitcoins, lost some of my bitcoin to professional conmen, been banned for life from PayPal, held in my hand a silver Casascius, PCGS graded my first physical bitcoin and personally consigned my very first auction consignment at stacks bowers galleries in New York.
In November 2022 I withdrew from my senior year of college to build a website where I could list, index and sell my physical bitcoin collection. I ended up taking several months to build what is today eclipsepayments.com, the premier destination in the world for the acquisition of physical bitcoin and secure storage instruments.
I am forecasting the storage of cryptocurrency to become a multibillion-dollar industry by 2050. Storing digital scarcity in a safe and enduring fashion will be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
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Please enjoy just a handful of pictures I have taken out of the thousands over the years. I added these to make this post a bit more engaging than a long wall of text. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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Lealana goodness First Pictures of the very first unredeemed 0.5
BTC 2013 lealana I ever had in my possession; these pictures were taken with the yard sale DSLR.
It took several years to get my hands on one of these coins. Let alone photograph one for the first time.
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Camera upgrade After I made some money with collectables, I upgraded to a state-of-the-art cannon Eos r5. Providing the absolute highest resolution of holograms, the hobby has ever seen.
From taking my very first pictures ever to this camera took slightly over two years of learning.
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Two very hard to find Lealana 1BTC coins side by side. This was the very first time I ever managed to have two 1 BTC Lealana tokens in the same vicinity. One of these coins is redeemed, the other is a buyer funded version.
It was many years in the hobby before I even got to hold one of these coins.
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This was my cryptocurrency management system in 2020. 2x cold storage ledgers and 1x ledger X for hot wallet transactions. Book for accounting and management of transactions. This setup has since been disassembled and I no longer use this configuration.
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The advertisement that drew me to bitcoin is now minted on a coin by Cyptoimpurator. 2019 Cryptoimpurator "magic internet money" next to the original reddit ad. Funded with 0.005
BTC this is one of the best coins in my collection.
This coin has since been PCGS graded.
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Denarium Dove coinPictures of one of the denarium dove coins like the one I used to stare at for hours on end and bring with me on walks and camping trips.
This particular coin is not the one used in my famous first poster.
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Very first posterHere is the final release photo of my very first poster. This is an iconic step in my furtherance and development as a cryptocurrency enthusiast. As well as the first time a physical bitcoin ever made its way onto a poster.
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I hope you enjoyed my backstory. Please be on the lookout for the official launch of my website in the coming days.
