My jaw dropped when I read "Made $5,000 today selling FORTH from AMPL!"
$5,000 is a lot of money! And would create such amazing opportunities to build sustainable crypto assets. The AMPL thing caught my eye, too. PublishOx pays all of us users in AMPL. Did I miss something about this FORTH business? I used the PRESEARCH engine to try to find information (and maybe used a competitor after that, but don't tell anyone!), and first via Coindesk, then via Coinbase, and then finally on Ampleforth's website I saw that all you needed to do was show that you had "interacted" with AMPL and you would be allotted the Ampleforth governance token FORTH using some mysterious ratio.
I certainly had interacted with AMPL! I had several dozen from PublishOx and I had recently sent them over to KUCOIN using the new partnership between the two. Surely that's an interaction, right? I mean, I didn't see a lot of value in actually HODLing AMPL, so I swapped it into a few of the "small cap gems" that KuCoin is famous for. They wouldn't hold that against me, right? It made me feel like a boss trader! (For about 1 second because the value of everything dropped almost the instant I completed the trades...of course...I am a perfect trading companion, just do the opposite of what I do Haha! sad)
Getting AMPLForked
But Ampleforth only allowed wallet connections to claim FORTH. Uhhh... Why was that? Surely if interacting with AMPL was all it took then it wouldn't matter where you interacted with it?
It did. It mattered 100% all the way.
I don't know if they will add other kinds of interactions eventually, but as things stand, having AMPL in my name on PublishOx and sending it through the special deposit function they set up with KuCoin does not count. Not at all. F U Prego, you're not wanted around here. Eat gecko turd pie and eff off.
It is not just me, but several others, who didn't interact with AMPL in the right way. Sure, I seem the most upset by this. Like when your favorite sports team pees their pants in the big game, destroys decades of fan hops, and then calmly tell reporters "we put it all out there, it just wasn't meant to be." WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WASN'T MEANT TO BE *#^%#(^&Y$^@(#*^%%@!#@$^!@&!!!!
Anyway. I was having strong reactions. Despair, anger, self-anger, crypto-anger, probably even inexplicable llama or alpaca-anger. Who knows? You see, I looked at other people's reports of being able to sell off $5,000 worth of FORTH and I am pretty confident that I would have been able to claim at least that much. But because I waited to withdraw my AMPL, and when I did withdraw it I sent it one way and not the other way, I got jackshit.
I got AMPLForked where the sun don't shine.
The New FOMO
How could such a tiny, tiny difference in clicks mean that some people who had the same exact asset as me - the same %#&%$# thing! - get thousands of dollars worth of an interesting governance coin and I get absolutely nothing other than a sleepless night and lots of anger over my stupidity?
The thing is, there are many, many, many, many, many, many things about Cryptoworld that are like this. I am in sync with all the arguments about the corruption, inequity, and enduring self-serving bullcrap of conventional financial institutions. All crooks, you say? Guilty, guilty GUILTY, I say. But, it is really rare in my experience that some variation of where an asset is held and how it is transferred from one account to another could result in THIS HUGE OF A LOSS in the regular, corrupt world! It is practically unheard of - and with no recourse? Give me a break!
But in Cryptoworld? It is the norm. There are so many opportunities on so many platforms, and such there are vast information and influence advantages in so few hands, that a noob learning his way, like me, can miss out over and over and over and over again, by doing or not doing tiny little things. And never get a second chance.
Far from a Fear Of Missing Out (old FOMO), the constant feeling I get in Cryptoworld is F#@ked Over, Missed Out. It is the past tense, not the future tense. It is the "I make insane profits, how about you?" that messes me up the most in this space. It is literally a daily thing. I'll be a day too late to get insane pool payoffs, or I'll be a week too slow in bargaining with KYC robothugs to catch an upsurge in prices, or I'll be 1/10th of a second too slow to nab a lovely NFT in a drop.
Learning The Right Lessons
I am bad at crypto, I guess, always being too slow, or sending coins using the wrong system or holding them in the wrong place, or not having enough liquidity on the DirtyHotDogWater Secure Chain. And, right now, I am on the fence about whether I despise Cryptoworld with a blind, never-dying rage, like Star Trek's Khan or whether I love Cryptoworld with a mesmerized fascination. If you ask me tomorrow, I will be a long way back to loving it, and eventually I will look back on this experience of getting AMPLForked in the bungholio with, well, not happiness of course, but with a different perspective.
Cryptoworld is an uncaring, unforgiving land of extremely high penalties for bunglers, and right now I am still a bit of a bungler. It can be confusing when all of the people I know in Cryptoworld are so kind, caring, interesting, supportive, and sharing, and then the procedural realities of Cryptoworld are such hardass soul-stompers. But the people are still awesome and Cryptoworld, as cold-hearted as it is, is forever restless.
There will be many more opportunities! That is the real lesson here. Who the heck knew that AMPL would create thousands and thousands of rich people out of the blue? I certainly didn't, and I don't think PublishOx did either - can you imagine for a second how much value in FORTH PublishOx would have if it could qualify all of our unwithdrawn AMPL as being its well-interacted-with AMPL? They were as surprised as anyone I am sure. But PublishOx isn't wailing over missing out on what would be millions for them - they're celebrating, holding a contest, and giving away money!
Maybe I can move on too., have my own (very cheap) party! There will be many more opportunities!
Because some people scored big on this unexpected windfall and I did not is just a thing that happened. It is not an indictment on me - I did what I thought was the best set of actions to avoid high gas fees for me and for PublishOx. What happened with the newly grown accounts of all these people has nothing to do with me, and me missing out - *this time* - has nothing to do with being an idiot or being unfit for Cryptoworld.
I wanted to get into Cryptoworld for specific reasons - hedge against inflation and problems with fiat, increase the potential for international mobility, and most importantly because I thought it was wild, ridiculous, fascinating FUN! I can still work toward all of that, and I have seen with my own eyes how huge results can just...happen! (granted there were tears in my eyes, because, you know, I was getting AMPLForked over ((sorry, couldn't resist)))
And that leads me to the real, new FOMO
FOMO = F#@ked Over, Move On!
At the end of the day, Cryptoworld is just as cold, uncaring, rambunctious, chaotic, treacherous, confusing, exciting, thrilling, enticing, rewarding, fascinating, and FUN as it ever was, and I am glad to be here bungling my way around!
So, I am somewhat OK now with what happened. I think I have learned the right lesson and am happy to embrace the real, new FOMO.
But if YOU scored big on this AMPLForking, the least you could do is buy me a beer, you luck SOB!
Hahaha! I joke because it is true! Beer me!
~~~~~
If you would like to donate to the Not-suddenly-rich AMPLForked Bunglers of Cryptoworld Association (NABCA), please consider using one of my referral links to these sites, please like, follow, and tip to your heart's content, and even consider giving me a little dose of Potassium (banano)
"The Hot List" that I am most excited about: Cointiply, RollerCoin
"The Maybe! List" that you might enjoy even if the payout is not so great: FreeBitco.in, Pipeflare.
And if you really want to go deep into the Cryptoverse, you could try tipping me some Banano here ban_16udp8635what7k4yfqr89hzzeh7wd9cub7dhxj8ztapj9hkehriqg646w6b
I don't know if it will work, and I don't know if BAN will be worth anything but it is a wacky, fun project that I'm happy to promote it!
