You know, I want to write a scifi story now about how aliens make #FirstContact with us, despite our aggression and disunity...
They choose to land at an #Ethereum conference in 2023 and say, “We want to welcome you to export consensus algorithm DAOs to the #GalacticFederation!”
ETHEREUM CONFERENCE: Wed, 11 August 2021 Location: Bogota, Colombia, estrata 5 Name: DEVCON VI Weather: ~20 C / 68 F / Sunny
Today was my first time in Colombia. I had landed in Bogota the previous night, fresh in from the midnight flight from Houston, after leaving NYC at 6 PM that evening. No direct flights were a bummer, but what could you do? Colombia wasn't exactly a bustling tourist destination these days. Especially with coronavirus still raging the planet.
I noticed immediately that things were different here. The people seemed quite jovial and kind, passionate and intelligent in that rugged way you always find in the higher altitude places. And at 2,644 meters above sea level -- woo! -- you really felt it! Your body acted like you were still 30,000 feet in the air. Because you really were!
I had decided to brave the pandemic and travel to such a rough country as Colombia because of the Ethereum DEVCON VI conference starting the next morning at the hotel in El Centro Commercial, one of the more upper class "estratas" of this huge city of 11 million people. That's more than half the population of my home state of Florida! All crammed in a valley smaller than Miami.
So why did I risk it? Why did I leave the relative biophysical safety of my home town of Tampa for a city and country that, at the best of times, had a reputation for holding Westerners like me hostage? And it wasn't like I was one of those crazy-go-lucky types who didn't worry about the pandemic, either!
No, it was because I strongly believed in cryptocurrencies in general and Ethereum in particular, for how they have and will revolutionize the world from the bottom up!
The democraticized and algorithmically-controlled creation of real digital currencies like Bitcoin and especially Ethereum, combined with the power of Ethereum's "smart contracts" to form completely autonomous, distributed semi-intelligent collectives (called DAOs: Distributed Autonomous Organizations). Well! Not to get too cryptogeeky, but let's just say DAOs are going to change how we live in so many ways, it's not even funny!
And just being a small part of that by attending DEVCON VI during the height of the global pandemic? It just seemed so worth the risks!
I had first heard of Ethereum in November 2017, back when the first and most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was going gangbusters at close to $15,000 per coin. Man! I remembered when a full Bitcoin only set you back $500 like it was yesterday! It got me thinking and before I knew it, I was drawn deeply into the world of cryptocurrency and anarcho capitalism.
When I discovered Ethereum and its DAOs and smart contracts, I just couldn't help but imagine that this was the future of human civilization, right here. How DAOs woulud probably, even inevitably, replace everything from mortgage contracts to judges and politicians! And the resulting boom in innovation that would lead us deep into the 21st Century and even off the planet.
So on a cold Friday morning in early December 2017, I made the plunge. I bought my first 1.0000000 of Ethereum for about $1,100 and thought proudly of how now I, too, was part of this leading charge into a more positive future!
I woke up to the sound of tropical birds singing. I looked at the clock by the bed and groaned.
4:33 AM? Really?! The Sun sure seemed rise quite early here!
Excited to explore this brand new continent, I jumped out of bed, took a ridiculously cold shower (Is hot water really that much of a luxury??) and went downstairs to see what they had for breakfast.
Oh. That's right. It wasn't until I was actually in the breakfast room area that I remembered how hotels worldwide had all cancelled their continental free breakfasts. It wasn't so much for health reasons as just a simple excuse to save a few nickels and dimes.
Disgruntled, I wondered outside and was immediately struck by just how gorgeous the city was! Mountain vistas surrounded me in every direction. The sky was crisp, cool; no humidity like my native Florida. A small bevy of middle school children ran past me, dressed in their school uniforms.
Well, at least here they're able to resume life! If only DeSantis had done a better job of controlling the plague in Florida!
It really chipped my shoulder how other countries had all locked down again in January 2021 to combat the height of the coronavirus pandemic and were now largely rid of it, while states like Florida and Texas had let it continue running roughshed, killing close to a million people until now with few signs of things returning to normal any time soon.
At least in Colombia, people could openly congregate again. I was still quite thankful how they required us to all have coronavirus rapid tests before we could even board -- or get off of -- the airplane. What a relief to be largely out of the pandemic's grip, if only for a week!
Because the Colombian government had responded with a swift and brutal military-enforced lockdown in mid-January of this year, coronavirus had been basically eradicated in the country, joining a host of others from India to Australia, The Philippines to Russia. That is how we were able to have the conference like it was 2019, with the addition of rapid tests and masks.
After walking a few blocks, following the smell of breakfast wafting in the breeze, I found it. A local empressa de comida (restraurant) serving something called arepas. They looked like rice pancakes, but they smelled delicious and tasted even better!
I couldn't help but notice the Bitcoin logo on the kiosk. I didn't speak any Spanish and the 20 year old teller definitely didn't know English, but I pointed at the arepa and then at the Bitcoin logo. She immediately picked up a laminated QR code paper and guestured for me to scan it.
Unprepared, I haphazardly fumbled through my apps list... A... B... D... O crap, go back. There it was: My favorite mobile cryptowallet: Coinomi. I clicked it and got my QR scanner opened up. As a middle-aged man behind me agitatedly shifted his feet, I scanned the QR code she provided and hurredly sent the Bitcoin to her.
Remarkable! I thought. Somehow Colombia -- this country I always imagined to be more, well, less developed -- had leapfrogged America, or at least Tampa, if even a small bodella like this one proudly accepted Bitcoin for breakfast!
I ordered 2 arapas and a bottled water, sat down on one of the chairs outside facing the mountains and quickly ate while thinking just how lucky I was to be here, now, and how the 6th annual Ethereum conference was just a couple hours away!
The convention was to be held in the outside courtyard of my hotel in the Agora Bogotá ampitheater.
The organizers had chosen Colombia for its relatively liberal visa-free tourist policy, and more importantly, for Bogota's always-temperate climate, which hovered around a consistent 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) year-round. Combined with the low humidity, hovering around just 20%, and you have an ideal indoor-outdoor climate for Westerners who otherwise would be uncomfortable outside almost anywhere else.
After I finished my breakfast, I read the convention's flyer on their website:
THE VENUE
Agora Bogotá is a newly constructed and state-of-the-art center that we hope will be, by far, the best venue to ever host Devcon.
Located just minutes from both Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport and from the historic Santa Fe and Candelaria neighborhoods of Colombia’s capital city, Agora presented us with an ideally-located and fully modern conference area that allowed us modern conveniences in an outdoor setting.
After I read the intro, I put my phone back in my shirt pocket and retraced my steps back to the Agora Bogotá.
I strolled out to the courtyard, already bustling with several hundred people like me: Crypto enthusiasts early to find our assigned seats and get situated before the mad rush and the "social distancing queues".
Yes, things sure are different now. I thought. Gone were the days of care-free, sit-where-thou-wilt. Now groups always sat at least 6 feet part, even outside, and modern social cues mandated that we all wear face masks at all times when near others, even outside on this bright sunny day.
A gentle mountain breeze whistled around me at about a meter per hour. I could still faintly smell the arepas and other breakfast foods being cooked just down the street. I saw a dozen or so grounds keepers in their bright yellow construction vests doing everything from picking up trash to trimming the bushes.
Boy! This is going to be so much different, and better, than last year's DEVCON! I thought. When it occured in mid-2020, it was the first time the conference had been 100% remote and everyone agreed, a whole lot had been lost. This is so much better! I thought. Plus, maybe I'll meet a girl who's also passionate of crypto and we'll just -click-!
Hey!! A guy can dream, right?
Besides! It had been over a year and a half since I had gone on any real dates. What can I say? I just wasn't a Casanova to begin with, and judging by all these Zoom dates, I just wasn't having much luck in that department at all.
You know... Now that I think about it... Every single Colombian girl I've noticed has been hot AF... Is there something in the water??
I suddenly had a spidey sense, skid to a stop and came within a split second of slamming into this blonde bombshell of a woman. There was a very conspicuous silver Ethereum DEVCON-VI coin logo stitched into her flannel jacket. Under it was a nametag that read “E-R-I-C-A”.
“HI! I'm Erica! I'm one of the coordinators. Here let me help you find your seat!”
“It's that obvious that I'm lost?” I asked; a slight tremor in my voice.
Man, was she beautiful. And if she loved Ethereum that much, she was obviously my type, too. There's NO WAY she's not married. I thought, trying to de-sych myself. I'd sooner be abducted by aliens than be able to take that fine specimen of a woman out.
“Here you go...Jason.” Erica said exuberantly, as she looked down at my own nametag I had affixed to my buttoned down grey polo shirt as soon as I had arrived in the courtyard.
“Thanks!” I said. “I must have really been in The Zone! I'm glad I bumped into you! I would probably still be lost!”
“Oh it's fine! I love helping people. And besides, my seat is right next to your's!” she said as she sat down just a few feet away.
As I sat there with the Colombian Sun rising at the 10 o'clock position even though it was barely 8 AM, I couldn't help but think, Maybe this trip is going to be even better than I could have thought!
It's harilous now. But I had literally no idea how absolutely mind-blowing crazy the next 4 hours would turn out to be!
No one did.
Except one ammateur astronomer in Norway no one believed.
“”
-- Act 2 ---
I had just read a sensation clickbait article the previous week about just this sort of crazy thing! "Galactic Federation of Aliens is working with the U.S. and Israel", it boldly proclaimed. It was from December 2020, while coronavrius was just about to start truly reshaping our societies in major ways.