I'd been working from home since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. I took the pandemic a lot more seriously than most people. As a reader of history, I knew that cycles of illnesses were part of the cycles of life and was grateful to live during a time where science was quicker to adapt and resolve my deepest fears than had I been living in the Middle Ages.
Despite being vaxxed and masked, I rarely went outside. I knew this virus would be a milestone event discussed decades from now. JFK shooting, moon landing, Challenger explosion, Chernobyl meltdown, AIDS epidemic, Columbine, 9/11. Wars, environmental collapses, pestilence, famines, and now Covid. Whenever humanity went through a milestone event, things that survived it or commemorated it sometimes became collectibles, speaking to the future about the zeitgeist of that moment.
As I perused the marketplace, I saw hundreds of images, but nothing spectacular. Nothing worth putting money into, and I closed it out, knowing that if I didn't buy anything, money staked would grow anyway. Went back to the real world and talked to my spouse about my decision. They were not thrilled about my leap into the crypto NFT world. I expressed how I was using money that I would typically use on Patreon, Kickstarter, or financial gifts that I spent on strangers and others or on buying clothes on the internet; this money would be leveraged to grow faster than 1% at the bank. They acquiesced for now that if that's what I wanted to try, ok, but be careful. NFT stands for Nonfungible token. Meaning anything I bought with that real money was buying nothing with no exchangeable value. I wasn't going to give a grocery store an image in exchange for some food, but I could give them dollars. ADA is not a currency I could buy food with or pay bills. As long as I understood that, ok. In my head, I understood, but I also knew that if you sold the image for more than you bought it for, you could turn the ADA back into dollars, so I just needed to buy the right things. Right?
I asked the young man what he was buying, and he showed me his "Virus." It was a pointy-shaped graphic with a menacing face, sharp teeth, and some thug necklace. Frankly, not my style. He was very excited,
A little too "metal" for my preference. He said that soon if you had two of these in your wallet, you would get a free Super Virus. The pointy guys had up to 18 traits to look for; the ones with the most traits had the highest value. All I had to do was look at the token pictures, count up the trait values, and know that each of them had been minted at 50 ADA. So any that I bought under mint with at least 8 or more traits would be a good deal. I saw lots of these pictures selling for about 30 ADA. I started scooping them off what they called "the floor." In the marketplace, at the time, your ADA was tied up for 24 hours while you waited for the seller to send the asset. I knew that I needed at least one pair of these; the higher traits, the better. I put in offers using about a quarter of my ADA. $500 bucks for a hot and climbing project dealing with the zeitgeist of the day and offering free super viruses and to sweeten the pot some ADA into the wallet as well.
It was such a thrill to find a prickly virus and say, OMG, this one has 9 traits or 10 traits, and it's way less than 50 ADA, click, click, click...make an offer, make an offer. The young man said I needed sets in my wallet before taking a snapshot in only 3 days. The senders were not sending, though. I started to have that feeling I later learned was called FOMO (Fear of missing out). I raced through the marketplace, grabbing as many as I could at the end of the fever. I learned the snapshot was taken a day earlier than I thought, and I had only managed to have 2 sets in my wallet by that time.
NO PROBLEM. So what? I would only get two of the free Super Viruses (Instead of 12) and +4 ADA. I'd do better next time. That didn't mean the basic viruses I was contracted to purchase didn't have future value. Suddenly, though, there were even more Viruses on the market. Explained away because some people only wanted to get a free super virus, and they ditched the parent virus, not respecting the project had a complete plan for all of the pieces.
Everyone said how sad those ditchers would feel when the utility was realized in chat. I continued to complete original virus sales but unveiling my Super Virus combos was the most exciting. What would I get? The mint took about a week to fulfill. An agonizing wait which I used to make friends in the chat. After all, we'd be going on the journey together.
When I unveiled my supers, I was of mixed emotion. Unfortunately, I only had lower lever OG's in the wallet at snapshot, so the created SV wasn't as impressive as others were sharing, but they were still pretty cool. I started looking over the marketplace again. People were selling the brand-new SVs cheaper than the "parents," which was insane, and I immediately swiped as many as possible. Rarity lists weren't out yet! The Art on the SVs was way more remarkable than the parent OG's.
I honestly didn't understand why. Then people started putting the pretty rare one up for sale and for very high prices. I smiled at my bag of virus tokens. I had some tasty high-value SVs bought at lower than the mint of one parent. When we got to the next road map stage, I felt I would be sitting pretty.
I didn't list any for sale, but I did notice that my spending ADA went fast during this spree, and I didn't want to be all in one project, so I grabbed the stake money and scoured for my opportunity,
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