Hi, what do you go by and what's your EVMavericks #?

Hi, I am Benido, sometimes Benido2030, sometimes OMGBenido and my EVMaverick is #968

Nice to meet you Benido. How did you get into crypto?

A very good friend of mine quit his job at the beginning of 2018 and had a lot of free time before starting his new gig. We were chatting a lot back then and he asked me what he should be doing with all the time since he had to go to the office without really having tasks. I asked him if he was interested in this Bitcoin stuff and if we should spend some time understanding the hype.

Well, we did that and setup a Binance account together, both chipping in some money. And that's how we bought the literal top of January 2018, bought for the first time on a Friday, at 1200$, market topped 24 hours later at 1300$.

I somehow stuck around despite the hard first months, he's interested, but not deep into the stuff.

Wow, that's quite a way to get in! Big props to you for sticking around and continuing to learn. What's the one thing from crypto that excites you the most today?

That's a very good question, since a lot of topics in crypto even today still excite me.

I think what excites me the most is the paradigm change that blockchains bring. I live in Europe and to be honest our banks aren't great, but they work and they aren't very expensive. But I think that's not the case for a lot of people in other countries. So I still think that defi and censorship resistant networks are a beautiful thing and hope that continuous tokenization in the future adds more value down the road.

On top what really excites continues to be the community, both the larger Ethereum community, but especially the ETH Finance community including EVMs.

Speaking of communities, how did you join the EVMavericks community?

I was lucky enough to mint my EVM more than 2 years ago. Since I was part of ETH Finance I qualified for the mint. It felt like a great reward and I was and still am very happy about #968.

And what made you stay in the community, especially as we started entering the beginning of the bear market post mint?

First of all my thesis hadn't really changed. Ethereum and Ether were still a great investment, both for my time, but also from a financial point of view. For me it was clear that Ethereum was here to stay, L2s were popping up left and right and I was sure that a new cycle would begin eventually.

On top of that I really enjoy spending time with the EVM and ETH Finance community. There are so many smart people, so many great discussions, thoughts and of course the occasional funny shitpost. I think the people really play a very important role for me and I am sure I would have never learned so much if it wasn't for this beautiful bunch of people. I owe this community big time!

Any favorite memories from the community that you wanna share with us?

There are so many. I still remember standing under a bridge because it was raining on the day of the merge and refreshing the daily on my phone to see if it was successful. I was far away from everyone and still it didn't feel like that. Or the bankless episode with superphiz. It convinced me to become a solo staker despite my fear of not being technical enough to run a validator. The euphoria of early 2021 when we hit 4k only to crash to 1,6k-ish some weeks later and how hard it was to lose that money. At the same time I didn't feel alone and am now more or less cool even if ETH's price swings a lot. The 324 jokes. I could probably go on for some time...

Sounds like many great memories! I know you are one of the top contributors on Ethfinance and yet we rarely see you on discord. What creates such discrepancy for you and what do you think Mavs can do better to motivate people to participate in their gated parts of the community too?

I really think me not being on discord and participating in the Mavs community more has nothing to do with EVMs. I am just old and a boomer that can't handle discord. I grew up in online forums and posts in a threaded form. This real time, chat like communication is something I just can't follow. So I would like to apologize, I know I am missing out! I know that some EVMs left Reddit like a year ago or so and won't come back and that the EVM discord would be the place to meet them and I hate myself for being incapable of managing discord.

I hope that one day someone builds a reddit-like experience / client on decentralized rails and we can all reunite there.

Understandable, in the meantime we are going to be appreciating all your insights on Ethfinance. What about Benido outside of crypto, how do you usually spend time? what are your hobbies?

Benido2030 is a reference hoping to be retired by 2030, so I still have to go to work for now... To be fair, I have a "good" job that allows me to spend a lot of time thinking and writing about Ethereum. I am married and have two beautiful boys at home, aged 5 and 1. I spend a lot of time with them. I love cooking, but haven't had a lot of time to cook lately. On top I used to play a lot of field hockey when I was younger and pick that up again 2 years ago. I also support my local football team, even went to see a game for the first time in like 6 years with my oldest son last weekend, which was a great experience.

Seems like quite a fulfilling life my friend. Before you go, any alpha or wisdom that you can share?

I think it's really important to understand why you are invested in Ethereum, also when it comes to potential financial rewards. For me this why is my family, my kids, both for the freedom Ethereum brings and money that could make their lives easier and all of us happy.

At the same time I am 100% sure that money is not everything, if you're in it just for the money, that's likely not going to make you happy.

On top I am very thankful for a lot of people I met in the community. I haven't met any people in real life, but hope to do so in the future, both privately but also at for example HodlerCon. 2026! I really believe in the "friends along the way" meme.

Lastly, is there anything else that you want to share or mention? The floor is yours, Benido!

Again, I would like to thank the members of the EVM and ETH Finance community. I have learned so much from you and 100% wouldn't be here without you. On top I have laughed a lot in dark bear market times, so thank you for that as well.

And if you, reader, are a lurker in one of the two communities... I would love to read / hear from you! I am pretty sure there are a lot of smart people hiding on the internet and that's totally fine - but I would still love to read from some of you because I am sure the community will benefit!

Also if you happen to have 32 ETH but aren't running a validator, think about it and start playing on a testnet. I am stupid, but managed to run one, so you can as well. Most of the new validators that are spun up are LST/ LRTs and that's not ideal. If you don't have 32 ETH think about Rocketpool or one of the new DVT solutions. Help to keep Ethereum decentralized!

Subscribe to be the first one to receive all the next episodes and more!

Socials:

Discord | Pro Opensea | Website | Farcaster | Twitter/X| Lionpaper | Treasury | Youtube |

Old Weeklies | r/Ethfinance | Members' Projects + Daily Doots | Weekly Daly Doots Roundup