The Beginnings: Indifference
In 2016, I was introduced to Bitcoin, and I discarded it. Swap the year for any other, and that sentence will resonate with many, maybe even you. So will the rest of my Bitcoin beginnings.
There was nothing exciting about it. From a technology standpoint, the mainstream narrative was portraying Bitcoin as the old dog, the first of its kind, the proof of concept. The word on the street was: “blockchain not Bitcoin”. Bitcoin was not where money could be made either, it had made its run and there was little upside left for it. Instead, the shinny new rocks were all the hype. The message was “crypto not Bitcoin”, and so I followed. As a result, I didn’t get involved with Bitcoin again until much later, almost two years later to be exact. Instead, I read up on tokenomics and how the world was going to change from it. Little did I know I was getting excited about digital barter. Anyhow, I bought some tokens, made money, and then lost the money. Frankly too much money, for a 19 year old.
Over time, I found my way back to Bitcoin and its community (yes Bitcoin has a community, fight me) and I observed the high conviction of Bitcoiners. Conviction was nothing new, every token pumping cheerleader seemed to have conviction. But this conviction felt different. It felt more grounded, more mature, dare I say, more honest. After reading some well-written articles on the topic, I found myself buying a copy of the Bitcoin Standard, and so began the next phase of this journey.
A New Love
I won’t call myself original for changing my views on Bitcoin by reading the Bitcoin Standard, but here we are. It wasn’t until I approached it from the economics side that I re-considered my interest in Bitcoin. Reading the Bitcoin Standard was my first step down the path of sound money, and everything it entails. I came out on the other side of it with a new-found conviction that restoring sound money would cure all ills. And thus a new-found motivation, no, a mission, to get involved with Bitcoin.
From that point, I saw Bitcoin as one of the most profound technologies of our time. Not because I fell in love with a neat data structure that everyone seemed to have gone crazy about, but because of the deep impact it could have on society, and on humans. The technology wasn’t the motivation, all the rest was.
Still, I fell in love, flaws didn’t exist or they were temporary. Bitcoin was the cure to everything. Wealth inequality? Bitcoin was the cure. World hunger? Bitcoin was the cure. Hitting your pinky on a corner? Bitcoin was the cure. There was a revolution happening in front of me, and I had to get involved. On the positive side, I had found a new interest, and a lot of motivation to work on it. On the negative side, I was freshly out of my Data Science bachelor, with a lot of hype around my field, and zero interest to pursue it. After studying abroad for three years, it wasn’t with a lot of joy that I moved back in with my parents, and so began the next phase of this journey.
Lightning Strikes: Getting My Hands Dirty
In 2018, the same friend that had introduced me to Bitcoin, introduced me to Lightning. This time I had learned my lesson, I didn’t discard it, instead I just ignored it for another two years. Funny how these things happen. But now, it’s 2020, and Lightning was my path to contribute to Bitcoin.
So, I’m a technical guy, I graduated in a technical field, but at that point I wouldn’t have called myself a software developer yet. For me programming was about writing python scripts, adjusting variables in statistical models, printing pretty charts and stitching the whole thing together in a Jupyter Notebook (if you know, you know). Those skills were not the most applicable in the Bitcoin space. After writing a few articles about the Lightning Network and graph theory, I realised my career in Bitcoin was going to be short lived if I didn’t try to build something “useful”. And what better way to learn than to start your own project? And for the next six months, I built, my first Bitcoin/Lightning app. It was called Spark. My biggest accomplishment in those six months, was getting shit for the unoriginal name from Fiatjaf. If you don’t know who Fiatjaf is, he’ll be all the more happy for it. Fast forward to mid-2020 and the app is out, ready for its million users. It was a scary moment, going from a lurker to a builder, and exposing my work to the world. The app gained some traction, it got a few mentions and survived a grand total of 6 months before I shut it down. I realised the app was breaking Twitter’s Terms and Conditions, and I didn’t want to risk getting my life’s work rugged by Twitter. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out being a prophetic decision not to build a business on top of Twitter’s API. Something something, meant to be, something something.
The app was dead, a year had passed since leaving university and the perspectives of work in Bitcoin and Lightning were bleak. I headed back to the drawing board, or to the chalk board in this case, as I signed up for two more years of university, and so began the next phase of this journey.
The Rebound
What better way to heal from this recent break-up, than to sign up for a rebound relationship: a Masters program in computer science and big data engineering. I had to arm myself with a few more tools before going back on the offensive in my pursuit of a Bitcoin career, and more studying did not sound like a bad idea.
The rebound was helpful, but my mind was still elsewhere, and the little book of Destiny was aware of it. Just a year later, I received a message from my now co-founder and friend, Mick. Mick had been on his own Bitcoin journey. Our paths had crossed before when his journey took him to Lightning, but this time, the conversation was different. Mick had an idea for a Lightning app, and he wanted to talk about it. The idea was simple: to help people fund ideas that come up on Twitter.
After a short hour of conversation, I was on board, and the next call was scheduled to two weeks later. The bi-weekly calls became weekly, then daily, and just two months later, late August 2021, we started building it. Here was my second chance at contributing to Bitcoin! Six months later, the first version of Geyser was out, and a few months after that our first angel investor, Brad Mills, was giving us a chance, and so began the next phase of this journey.
A New Relationship
Fast forward one year, and the side-project had grown enough to deserve a real chance. Geyser became a company and it was time to commit to it fully. After having completed all my Master courses, and only having the thesis left, I took my friend’s and family advice and completed my Master thesis before pursuing my dream job. No, scratch that, I dropped out and got to work. There wasn’t a minute to waste to push Bitcoin adoption, and so began the last phase of this journey.
And They Lived Happily Ever After
For two years, Geyser has continued to grow. It has had its ups and downs, but I couldn’t be happier. I am contributing to Bitcoin, and building one of the coolest (in my very unbiased opinion) projects in the space. And so, they lived happily ever after.
But wait, this is my Bitcoin journey, not my Geyser journey. So what’s the ending on that? Well, what initially sparked me to write this piece was seeing all the recent drama around Bitcoin, Lightning and the scaling debate. No, not the 2015-17 scaling debate (aka: The Block-Size Wars), I mean the 2023-24 scaling debate (aka: the Sidechain-Drivechain-Covenant-Ark-Lightning-Soft-Your-Fork Wars). After a few years of working at the application layer of Bitcoin, I observe those debates from a distance. I have not spent enough time studying them to judge on the merits of each protocol upgrade, but I wanted to share my journey to provide another perspective on the matter. One that isn’t technical.
For all its flaws, I owe Lightning and the Lightning developer community, everything good that has happened to me in this space. Lightning achieved what Bitcoin previously hadn’t, it opened up the possibilities for building consumer apps, for getting involved with Bitcoin at the application layer, rather than at the protocol layer. It made Bitcoin more tangible, more accessible and therefore less intimidating to become a part of.
What was the first Lightning API I used? It was the LNBits and LNPay API. Yes, those mostly custodial, layers of abstraction on top of lightning. But guess, what? Those custodial services dropped the first domino of the most important part of my Bitcoin journey, and if you believe it matters at all, of Geyser’s journey.
As important as protocol debates are, let’s not demonise imperfect solutions. Let’s not turn a blind eye on their qualities. Bitcoin is imperfect, Lightning is imperfect, but they work, and they evolve. And so will continue, my Bitcoin journey.