310 lines
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310 lines
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<a class="navbar-link" href="/">Home</a>
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<a class="navbar-link" href="/sitemap.html">Sitemap</a>
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<a class="navbar-link" href="/friends.html">Webring</a>
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<span id="looking-for-work">
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<a href="/work/looking_for_work.html"><b>Looking for Work</b></a> — software, sysadmin, other — €30/hr — <i>2hr free!</i>
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</span>
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</div>
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<div id="content" class="content">
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<div id="outline-container-org949b385" class="outline-2">
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<h2 id="org949b385"><span class="todo TODO">TODO</span> This page is unfinished</h2>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-org87e07e1" class="outline-2">
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<h2 id="org87e07e1">Reflections on Independent Contracting in the Cryptocurrency Sector (2021-2022)</h2>
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<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org87e07e1">
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-org50d249a" class="outline-3">
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<h3 id="org50d249a">Introduction</h3>
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<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org50d249a">
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<p>
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This is a reflective article on the time I spent working as a software contractor in the cryptocurrency sector between 2021 and 2022 (maybe 10 months total?). I did a variety of things including full-stack web development, blockchain integrations, as well as some smart contract development and general consulting.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-org02cf90e" class="outline-3">
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<h3 id="org02cf90e">Background</h3>
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<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org02cf90e">
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<p>
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This period was around the tail end of my passing interest/involvement in the cryptocurrency phenomenon, a time period that roughly spans from 2016 until the end of this gig in early 2022. I was interested in the technology, but wasn’t actively building on it until 2021 and being 23 years old and living off student loans I didn’t hold a significant financial stake in cryptocurrency. My connection to the wider crypto<sup><a id="fnr.1" class="footref" href="#fn.1" role="doc-backlink">1</a></sup> ran primarily through a good friend, and it was this friend that recruited me to this gig.
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</p>
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<p>
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The basic premise was this. We had a bossman. Our bossman had gotten <i>very</i> wealthy<sup><a id="fnr.2" class="footref" href="#fn.2" role="doc-backlink">2</a></sup> from his early-stage insider involvement in a coin big enough to have a wikipedia page and scummy enough to have most of it be the controversy section — I won’t name it, but it was an operation on the order $10<sup>9</sup> and when it all blew up the SEC got involved and people got arrested, so if I were to name it you might recognize the name. I very much want to stress that our bossman was <i>not</i> a scammer type of person! Nor was he any kind of ruthless businessman, for that matter. Our bossman was… very much a true believer. He was actually a very nice person, a family man, generous and generally very pleasant to work with, just… naive. Best I know the story—and I heard all of this second-hand, mind—he eventually smelled a rat, realized he was involved in something shady, and got out close to but before the peak and thus before all of it blew up.
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</p>
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<p>
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I digress. The basic premise was this. We had a bossman; the bossman had some projects he wanted to see made, and paid us a fixed monthly fee to work on them. Sometimes there were extra projects outside our regular scope, and we’d get paid extra to do them. Sometimes the bossman’s friends needed something done, and we’d work for them for a while. I technically got paid by the bossman directly, but practically was more of a subcontractor working under my friend most of the time, which also meant that his base was twice mine and he got significantly more of the side projects; this is offset by the fact that he actually had specialist domain knowledge required for the job, which I lacked.
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</p>
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<p>
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I want to make abundantly clear that at no point did I work on anything that struck me as a scam, nor did I work for anyone I felt was a scammer — nor was I approached for any of these things! For those not directly involved at the time it’s easy to look at the silly and bone-headed things to come out of this culture and conclude that all of it must’ve been <i>some</i> manner of scam, especially because the scammers blend in seamlessly with the goofs, but the reality was that by and large the developer side looked identical to the user side — a bunch of goofs inventing strange gambling games to play with their funny money, merrimakers whose main flaw is naivité and whose main vice is playing games with that which ought to be taken seriously. At no point did I work on anything I saw as genuinely predatory, nor did I have reason to believe anything I did would have noteworthy real-world impact of any kind, let alone harmful impact.
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</p>
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<p>
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In a similar vein, even though I did feel overpaid and underqualified, it’s also true that I was actively recruited into this, accepted whatever pay was offered to me without pushing for more (which had I been a businessman of less ruth I believe I well could have), and did the work to the best of my ability to great satisfaction of my superiors. Though it is true that I was always aware that the work I was doing would be euphemistically described as “fruitless and silly”, I also don’t feel like I ever pretended to feel otherwise, though admittedly I never quite found the will to tell my boss that all of it was irredeemably pointless and he was better off just firing the entire team and finding a different hobby — also because I don’t believe that to be actually <i>true</i>; I should note that our bossman was well aware that what we were working on was in no way a money-making venue and that he seemed to be doing it “for the community” as a strange form of charity. How that was supposed to work I don’t know, but given his immense wealth I suppose our salaries were not unreasonable sums to spend on a hobby.
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</p>
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<p>
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Given its central importance to the story I suppose I must detail exactly how much I was being paid – a flat rate of $10k per month, plus extra for some side projects; I was doing this as a side gig while getting my undergraduate degree, so I wasn’t working on this full-time, though probably north of half of that. So, a very substantial amount of money for a young adult, but not “get rich and retire” money — given that the story ends with me (spoiler) deciding it wasn’t worth it and quitting, it follows that I don’t think it was anything to get jealous over or brag about. The gig was very much worth doing, and very much worth quitting early — this ain’t a tale of pride and shame, it’s the war stories of a younger man in fairyland.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-orgb7e8c90" class="outline-3">
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<h3 id="orgb7e8c90">The Work</h3>
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<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-orgb7e8c90">
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<div id="outline-container-orgbd421aa" class="outline-4">
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<h4 id="orgbd421aa">VW</h4>
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<div id="outline-container-orgd0e3d5f" class="outline-4">
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<h4 id="orgd0e3d5f">EW</h4>
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<div id="outline-container-orgc22ed12" class="outline-4">
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<h4 id="orgc22ed12">CM</h4>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-orga1f0ec0" class="outline-3">
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<h3 id="orga1f0ec0">Quitting</h3>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-orgd369180" class="outline-3">
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<h3 id="orgd369180">Spending the Money</h3>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-org1b9ef69" class="outline-3">
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<h3 id="org1b9ef69">Lessons Learned</h3>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div id="footnotes">
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<h2 class="footnotes">Footnotes: </h2>
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<div id="text-footnotes">
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<div class="footdef"><sup><a id="fn.1" class="footnum" href="#fnr.1" role="doc-backlink">1</a></sup> <div class="footpara" role="doc-footnote"><p class="footpara">I acknowledge some readers’ objections to shortening “cryptocurrency” to “crypto” and ask of them to acknowledge my aversion to regularly repeating a five-syllable word.</p></div></div>
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<div class="footdef"><sup><a id="fn.2" class="footnum" href="#fnr.2" role="doc-backlink">2</a></sup> <div class="footpara" role="doc-footnote"><p class="footpara">On the order of $10<sup>8</sup>.</p></div></div>
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</div>
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</div></div>
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<div id="postamble" class="status">
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<div id='footer'><div id='modified-date'>Last modified: 2025-10-02</div><hr>
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If you have any comments about this page, you can email me at: <br>
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<b>akk0</b> <i>{at}</i> <b>webbieweb</b> <i>{dot}</i> <b>org</b><br>
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<br>
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