Yes, I bought the T-Shirt!

Actually, I’d googled the Tezos Coin image a couple weeks ago, and ordered from an online, design-yourself T-shirt business. It arrived Friday, June 30, just in time for the July 1 Crowdfund kickoff at 2 AM, New York time. I’m not worried about a copyright on the image… Hell, I’m not selling T-shirts, and it came way too large anyway, so it’s my new nightshirt! My partner will really love me in it, if XTZ ever amounts to anything!

So why Tezos?

My circumstances, and goals are the answer.

Early in 2017, I got into Crypto in time to catch the rise in Ethereum. My average cost on 300 Ether was $32. The money I’d invested, I could afford to lose. So what to do when Ethereum started to slide a month ago?

I bought a bit of Steem Value for the fun of blogging, and moved everything left to a new Ledger Nano S while I read and questioned more. No rush, right?

I decided Vitalik was a genius, so would probably handle the scaling issue, so staying put with my Ether was an OK option. Bitcoin looked like a possibility, if I just wanted to park my funds, and maybe hope for a double or triple in a few years like Ethereum. Do 50-50% between them?

But since I already had invested all the funds I could afford to lose, and in the Coin World, ‘New Kids on the Block’ were still coming fast and furious, I looked for some upcoming coins with a much better potential rate of return in a few years time. What new coins seemed the most likely to be popular, early on, but also were intended to tackle common business problems on a global basis? So, ‘follow the Crowd,’ and ‘follow the Money’ became my filter.

I-Ota Buy This First!

About a month ago, Iota suddenly dropped into the Crypto Cap Top 10, and caught my attention with it’s Tangle, Microsoft connection and ongoing Dev. Projects. The Bitfinex Exchange handled Iota, and proved to be a friendly place, offering multiple security steps so that depositing some ETH there felt OK (for example, I whitelisted only my Ledger Nano S BTC & ETH addresses). I considered getting some Cloak Coin, but decided that it wouldn't be very smart to hide, or be suspected of hiding anything of value, here in our top-heavy, paranoid ‘Land of the Free!’

Buying Iota was easy, but getting it from the Exchange into a Wallet proved to be quite an ordeal, worthy of a batch of Steemit articles in itself! I stuck with depositing and holding my Iota in the current 2.3 Wallet, though I saw a new Iota-Wallet on Slack or Github that looks pretty cool. Unfortunately, it’s just too soon for me to trust it. Hopefully, my Ledger Nano S or some other hardware wallet will handle IOTA and XTZ one day. As for Iota, I bought 100 Gi .

And then came Tezos.

Wow, I read a ZOO of passionate, pre-Crowdsale opinions! Thanks, everyone starry-eyed, bitter, crazy or not! All your opinions helped me step into the ICO with my eyes wide open!

By last night, I had gotten ready to ‘donate’ BTC smoothly from my Nano S, rather than count on any Exchange to make a transfer promptly. Obviously, the trick was to get into the ICO early, and get the bonus 20% XTZ. Delays from an Exchange would be very expensive. I hooked up my Ledger Nano S to my laptop, and went to bed with my phone in my pocket, alarm set to 1:50 AM, on vibrate so as not to wake my partner, and hopefully, our dog.

I finally felt the vibrations and regained consciousness at 2:10 AM, saw the time and got busy! First task was, avoid the scammers and open the right Tezos ICO/Contribution Webpages on my new, web-virgin MacBook Pro. Bitdefender and NordVPN also seemed to whisper reassuring words in my ear. Still, until the end, I’ll admit I was anxious!

So I took Screen Shots every step of the way, and saved them on a Jump Drive.

On the first page, I gave them my email, created and saved my own PW, and then I had a Tezos Wallet page to download, with Wallet #, Secret 15 Word Private Key, a Public Key Hash, and my email. I printed it, also typed my original PW, then saved it on the Jump Drive. Then came a Contribution Page with a Bitcoin Deposit Address and Ethereum Contract Address. There was a warning to be sure and include contract data, if sending Ether. A window asked me to enter the amount of BTC I would donate, and calculated the amount of XTZ that would result assuming the Tezos Foundation issued coins like we hope they will! I played with the BTC decimals until I got to 100,200 XTZ, then opened my Nano S, sent my BTC to the Tezos address provided, and held my breath!

Well, I would be dead if I’d waited.

The Tezos notice said I could confirm my Contribution Received at check.tezos.com, where a window asked for my Wallet # and Public Key Hash. Its ‘Search for my Deposit’ then came up empty, but not to worry, the window said it might take up to an hour!

By 3:30 AM, I was pretty unhappy!

And tired! After trying again every 5 minutes, I started browsing on my IPad for web comments from other ICO folks. The Tezos Twitter feed had the most helpful notice, that the Confirmation Process was experiencing unexpected delays, and would be fixed soon! By 4 AM, I was still waiting!

So I fell asleep on the couch with my puzzled little dog

I stirred about 5AM, and flipped open my IPad where I lay. I’d connected it to the Tezos Confirmation Page and copied my Public Key Hash to the IPad so I wouldn’t have to wake up all the way and be even more disgusted. But there it came, my Tezos Confirmation! And It was all there! Yes, all of It! Yay!!! We quickly nodded off again.

So now I have nothing to do, but wait on the rest of the ICO

I was great while it lasted, but there’s no cigarette to light up in bed, afterwards.

When I made my contribution, the total Crowdsale BTC donated was around 1,700. As I write now, at 5 PM, the count is around 32,500 BTC equivalents. That’s about $80,000,000, suggesting the XTZ cap is growing steadily on the coinmarketcap.com list of Cryptos.

Day 1 not over, and still climbing! Go Zug, Breitman and Breitfrau!

So, where ‘o where will the Tezos Journey turn next! Where will it end?

This was my first ICO. Many of you have been there, so tell me to be patient.
I think I'll enjoy watching what the Iota and Tezos Devs. do with their software and business opportunities over the next year.
At least now I’ll have an enjoyable alternative to our poor Country’s daily enema of US political TV news!

Thank God, and thank Tezos, for that!

Bluebird