Happy #Ethereum #Merge Day to all who have walked even a brief leg of the turing-complete #cypto journey.

Regardless of how today plays out, this is a moment to pause, to look back on small beginnings, to ponder all that has happened since, & most of all to hope for what might come next.  

If you weren't around to read the original Ethereum announcement on the blustery January day it dropped, or to wonder "is this yet ANOTHER scam, OMG when will it stop?"  😁, then make some time to look back and read this brief post today.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428589.0

We who know, and we who use “crypto” are orders of magnitude more in number now, on this day in 2022, than on that January day in 2014. 

Global media is covering the merge. 

Law makers and regulators are paying attention to the result, and actively debating their rule making. 

Social media has watch parties with attendees from every continent.

Tens of thousands are at conferences around the globe throughout this month networking, deal making, recruiting, and strategizing. 

Regardless of prices, markets, uncertainty, and more, the possible future that was sparked by Satoshi on a different much darker January day has pushed ever forward through the grind and effort of so many people during the years since, with this merge just one milestone. 

But even so, that future, a better future is barely just begun. 

And as we look ahead from this point to all that comes next, to the debates, the experiments, the challenges, the failures, and the successes, across all blockspace, across all state, on all chains that are committed to a better future,  let’s remember that each step is the foundation of the next, and bit by bit, year by year, there remains a hope to build a world where data, identity, privacy, access, innovation and so much more are not monopolized by the few, or driven through opaque channels, or guided by biases they may not even realize they have, but instead open to all, resiliently online, and able to be trustworthy rails disintermediated from untrustworthy humans upon which our collective journey towards greater flourishing can travel. 

In parting, if you weren't around during the blocksize wars to play with wallet.dat files on bitcoincore and eventually with BCH from bicoinABC, then live a little history now, hold a little ETH in a wallet during the merge / fork, and make a memory that turns into a story to tell later.  

Much like that obscure bitcointalk announcement post, today’s merge is history! So make your mark with your key on chain – a mark that will live as long at the Ethereum chain lives.  YOU WERE HERE. 

Onward, to #Web3.