The student who sold his Toyota (1\2)
- Jun 18, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 30, 2024
In 2013 I had to relocate from my country just to be able to marry the woman I chose, as civil marriage are not being conducted in Israel.
While at it, I also started examining alternatives for future investments, as I saw the outcomes of the 2008 crisis, due to the financial crash in the US.
One thing that caught my attention is the lack of credibility while transferring funds via the traditional SWIFT system.
One could wait for days to receive confirmation, and in most cases, the sum arrived with significant deductions, after being routed via numerous different banks across various continents.
It was clear to me that in the 21st century, such flaws should not be part of our daily experience.
After being exposed to relevant content and conducting self investigations - I started to learn about Blockchain technologies in general & Bitcoin specifically.
Once my newlywed wife and I returned to Israel to validate our marriage, we decided to invest the small sum we had left - in crypto.
At this time, central Tel Aviv was packed with students sleeping in their tents, as part of the housing prices protest. Already then I understood the general trajectory - the Israeli Govt is slowly abandoning the young generation as they find themselves enslaved to the former generations' accumulative debt.
As a result, a vibrant creative community established a bar in the Florentin neighborhood called Bar-Kayma (Hebrew for 'sustainable'), where the movement held meetups & arranged activities.
At the same moment as I left the cash-filled envelope with the bartender, my blockchain.info wallet acknowledged the incoming transaction for the equivalent amount in Bitcoins.
Today the platform is called blockchain.com and is worth billions. Back then, it was a place where only crazy people like me, as society saw us back then, people who put money on Bitcoin, would hang out.
I never saw or hand-shake the man who sold me his bits and passed by later on that night to recollect his cash.
The entire communication was managed live via Facebook Messenger.
It felt so right, so smooth and so simple. And yet, I couldn't believe it, so after 3 blocks I pulled out my laptop, and took some shots with my phone of the incoming mail, approving the transaction.
In preparation for relocating to LATAM, I decided to sell all my appliances for Bitcoin and started publishing ads in all the relevant places - from sound processors, DAW, LED screens & up to the washing machine - I offered it all for BTC.
When I offered my Toyota Run-x for sale in return for BTC, people called me crazy.
Once this part was finished, I downloaded the wallet to a desktop, disconnected it from the web, and stored it before departing to live for 10 years abroad.
In the next article, You'll find out what happened when I tried to access the wallet after 10 years.
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