Adventures in Lumens

So, I got an email from Blockchain with a request to verify my identity and get free Lumens, whatever they are. Sure, why not? I'll sell you my ID. So I logged into Blockchain and uploaded my credentials. I got my Lumens. It was legit. I transferred some of it right away to see how it worked. It worked well--transferred lightning fast.

Then I converted  it to USD. That worked, too. It was real money. Coinbase and Blockchain snagged their fees, of course. They weren't too bad. I decided to buy a bit of Lumens, convert some of it to Ripple. That worked, too. Now I can say I have Ripple and I have Lumens. So what if these things are worthless air, virtual coin? I haven't spent much on my experiment. So far, it's bubblegum money, small amounts, worth a gamble. Something to play with. More fees than profit.

When I went into Coinbase, I had an invitation to learn about Lumens and earn more Lumens by inviting friends. I took the challenge. Therein came the first downside. My own lessons worked fine. But my referral link for my niece led her to a seeming dud. She watched the videos, but got no quizzes. She did not get her money. I was unhappy, seeing how I had twisted her arm to try Lumens. So I told my sister to just ignore the referral link I sent to her. Bummer.

Did I do something wrong by getting Lumens from both Blockchain and Coinbase? Did I miss some obscure small print in Coinbase's T and C? I don't know.

I really loved how quickly the Lumens transferred, loved that you could transfer small amounts of it, loved that it could be converted to USD or other coin with no problem, and I loved that the value apparently remains stable. I did not love the bait-and-switch perpetrated by Coinbase.

I'm particularly disappointed that it finally seemed possible to hold a token, get other people excited about it, transfer small amounts of it, and generally play around with it a bit. I had high hopes of getting my friends to play crypto with me instead of warning me to stay away from the dark side of the web as they always do. And why am I so desperate to make cryptocurrency a social thing, anyhow? Wasn't my big gripe about FarmTown the social aspect of the game? That you had to shamelessly beg and bully your friends to send a tree or a sheep? And now I'm begging them to try cryptocurrency.

Well, I mistakenly thought I would reward my niece with Lumens, but instead, my niece is irritated that I wasted her time. And I'm frustrated that I still have nobody in this hemisphere willing to trade tiny amounts of coin. I'm sitting here with a pocketful of Lumens that seem to have great potential (as fast-traveling cash, not a get-rich-quick scheme); but my Lumens have no place to go...

If this is how they expect to promote universal adoption of crypto... it's not working. They're not there yet.