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Jason Harris is a world-class American glass artist and founding father of Jerome Baker Designs, a number one purposeful glass firm based in 2003 and primarily based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The feds seized my web site JeromeBaker.com throughout Operation Pipe Goals, which was a federal effort to carry these of us promoting bongs and pipes throughout state traces to justice. It was 2003. There weren’t plenty of web site seizures occurring. The web didn’t actually begin in earnest till 1996. There wasn’t plenty of regulation on the market at first. Porn was massive on the web. After which, shopping for and promoting drug paraphernalia caught on.
Throughout Operation Pipe Goals, when 55 of us have been arrested together with Tommy Chong, they seized my web site. A Quicktime-animated American flag was positioned on my web site. It was a pixelated graphic, and so they made it so it regarded prefer it was flying within the wind. It learn: “This web site is property of the USA Division of Justice.”
It was the brand new equal of seizing my automobile or boat. As a substitute, they seized my web site. I purchased it again from anyone for $700. It’s like getting an previous automobile again that obtained seized by the police. I really feel extremely blessed to be working off the unique area.
Lawyer Common John Ashcroft acknowledged on the time: “With the arrival of the web, the unlawful drug paraphernalia business has exploded. The drug paraphernalia enterprise is now accessible in anybody’s dwelling with a pc and web entry. And in houses throughout America we all know that kids and younger adults are the fastest-growing web customers. Fairly merely, the unlawful drug paraphernalia business has invaded the houses of households throughout the nation with out their information … At the moment, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Activity Drive … has taken decisive steps to dismantle the unlawful drug paraphernalia business by attacking their bodily, monetary and web infrastructures.”
This expertise led me early on to turn out to be thinking about bitcoin. I began taking bitcoin when it was most likely at about $600. It was engaging to me as a result of I may do enterprise with totally different components of the world and never be banned. Ask anybody within the hashish business: you’re consistently having to take care of account closures, app closures, and many others. I do know these within the bitcoin business expertise the identical. Bitcoin was additionally engaging to me, as a result of I benefit from the “grey space” high quality of it.
Having the ability to be a part of the unique Silk Street, having the ability to be engaging to those who wished to purchase issues on-line with out being observed, all go hand-in-hand with what I do: making bongs. I did have an inkling the bitcoin worth was going to blow up, so I used to be selling it as a lot as doable as a cost technique on JeromeBaker.com.
I don’t blow glass anymore, until for a particular function. For a time, one such particular function was for patrons who paid in bitcoin. I’d blow them a Slyme Bubbler for one bitcoin. They might ship bitcoin to Jerome Baker Designs’ public bitcoin tackle and e-mail a delivery tackle. I nonetheless keep in mind my final bitcoin buy for a customized piece. The value was $700.
I don’t see the identical viability for different cryptocurrencies that I do with bitcoin. I settle for bitcoin at my enterprise. You should purchase merchandise with bitcoin. Tesla accepted bitcoin for a time, and I’m certain they are going to once more. Ethereum and different altcoins are extra about hypothesis. Bitcoin has quantity and velocity, and it holds worth.
To me, bitcoin is the flexibility to be a mover and a shaker, and empowers anybody to carry a separate account with worth and never have to fret about it being shut down. Bitcoin is a good forex for all markets, as we’ve seen. It not solely lends itself nicely to high-risk industries, as had been an enormous a part of its story, but additionally for nation-states trying to shield their very own inhabitants’s from forex devaluation. Bitcoin is a biblical algorithm. It has modified humanity perpetually.
It is a visitor submit by Jason Harris. Opinions expressed are fully their very own and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
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