Why I stopped taking crypto payments

Hi,

So this is not my main voice-over website. I have half a dozen websites, all targetting different audiences. Some people need a voice for an animation, others want to record a commercial or an instruction video. I have domains targetting all of those groups.

Years ago, when Bitcoin was in its infancy, I tried it out. At one point I owned about seventy Bitcoins, which I sold for a profit of TWO HUNDRED PERCENT. Oh yeah! I made a few hundred Euro that day, baby.

You must think I'm kicking myself now, but I really don't lose any sleep over it. At the time it was a nice bit of pocket money for a student. Almost nobody who had BTC in those days still has it now, unless they're dead or lost the hard disk. But I figured there might be a market for a knowledgeable voice artist, so I set up this website. I've voiced a few animations various online services that no longer exist and even did a weekly radio spot for a Dutch station to explain about digital currencies and report on the news.

But the more I researched digital currencies, the more I realised it's all a big scam. It's gambling. It's terrible for the environment. It enables criminal behaviour. It tricks poor idiots into investing their hard-earned money into a pyramid scheme. It facilitates tax avoidance. And the end result is a virtual currency that benefits nobody and can't be used for actual payments, if only because of the increasingly large processing fees. Nobody uses Bitcoin to buy anything normal like groceries or clothing, because of those fees and because it's too volatile.

Just about the only way people are reliably making money with digital currencies is by running exchanges, which then invariably get robbed or disappear. They made money converting ACTUAL money into FAKE money, in other words.

So yeah, I'm out. I had a small fraction of one BTC at one point, which I kept at Coinbase. I also had some Litecoin, which I bought purely to speculate with it. It cashed out, took my profits, reported them as income and now I'm done.

I've also been approached by some very shady individuals, who wanted me to record fake conversations to cover up crimes and infidelity, or voice explainer animations for their online gambling sites. Seriously, GTFO with that shit.

I'm keeping this website, because hosting is practically free and the domain costs me €12,50 per year, which is a business expense. And maybe this will get me some free publicity somewhere, or someone might ask me to voice something to expose crypto-scams. But they'll have to pay me through the normal, legal channels. Though not very much, because I'm very affordable!

Martijn Warnas, voice artist.