What do I mean by that? Well, when I first arrived at the University of British Columbia in September of this year, you would be hard-pressed to find someone more skeptical, even hateful, of the rise of cryptocurrency. At the time, I only really knew about Bitcoin, this trick by which friends of mine had been able to turn a few dollars into hundreds, and it sounded like a Ponzi scheme that was almost too good to be true. I never expected that the friends I would make in my first few months at university would force me to change my ways, yet they did. After days and months of being surrounded by crypto lingo, unable to escape it, I eventually caved and invested my first sum into a variety of altcoins. Had you told me a few months ago that I would be signing up for something like Steemit or investing my own money in an ICO, I would have told you to shut up.

I am by no means the strongest believer in the future of cryptocurrency, but I'm not so blind that I can't see how big a place it, blockchain and other technologies like them will have in the coming years. This is why I wanted to join the Steemit community; I wanted to be a part of an important part of the future; there's no use getting left behind. For those of you still reading this, my name is Nick and I'm a first-year student at UBC, studying international economics. I'm born and raised in Vancouver, one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, so expect lots of mountain photos from now on. I'm really interested in current affairs, especially in relation to finance and the stock market, and I always keep up to date on how the financial world continues to react to the rise of crypto. I hope I'll have the chance to keep writing about that kind of thing in the future.

Thanks to @maxy-hopkins and @benr0gers for getting me on board.