It actually weirds me out how not weird it feels. I got my first SOL payout for doing a voiceover gig last year, and I remember checking my wallet and thinking, “Huh, okay then,” like I’d just received a bank transfer. No fireworks, no existential monologue about decentralization. Just... money. I think the shift happened not because crypto got more mainstream, but because I stopped romanticizing it. Once you stop treating it like a movement and start treating it like infrastructure, it quietly integrates. Like electricity. I don’t need to believe in it—I just need to use it.

I relate so much! I used to think crypto was just nonsense. But now I have my little Saturday ritual too—coffee and rewards. My daughter helps me understand some of the deeper parts, but I manage my account myself. Have you tried setting goals? I made a simple one: earn enough ETH to buy my grandson a digital gift card.

That creeping normalization you’re talking about? It’s wild, right? I remember when telling someone you earned BTC was like admitting you brewed moonshine in your bathtub. It used to come with lectures, skepticism, and jokes about imaginary money. Now? I do a little freelance moderation for a DAO, and my mom literally asked me if she could get paid in ETH for tutoring online. The psychological shift is fascinating—once it enters your muscle memory, once your rent’s partially covered in stablecoins, the abstraction melts away. Fiat feels more “weird” now. Slower. More invasive. Earning digital currency doesn’t feel futuristic anymore—it feels practical. That’s the real revolution.

Same here. I never expected I’d enjoy earning digital currency, but it’s so straightforward once you understand it. It’s like checking your savings account—except it grows quietly each day. Have you experimented with the staking calculator yet? It’s a neat way to plan for long-term growth.

In some ways, I think it's kind of tragic how normal it’s become. I used to feel this electric joy whenever I received crypto—it felt like I was participating in something historic, decentralized, radical. Now it's like, “Oh, cool, my reward tokens cleared.” Maybe this is what success looks like—normalization. But part of me misses the friction. The learning curves. The esoteric edge. Back then, it wasn’t just money; it was identity. Now it’s another line on my invoices. Efficient, yes. But soulfully inert. Progress comes with a cost, I suppose.

My first crypto paycheck bought me a winter coat. That’s the moment it stopped feeling abstract. I didn’t convert it to fiat—I just used a Lightning-integrated store and it arrived three days later. No banks. No delays. And I guess the coat became this symbol, right? That it worked. That all the years of theory, volatility, the “ponzi” accusations—it had a tangible endpoint. I walked around in that thing thinking, “this is what crypto feels like when it lands in your real life.” That’s when it got real for me. Not during a bull run. Not after a whitepaper. After a warm coat.

Depends where you live. Here in Lagos, the moment crypto started feeling “normal” was less about tech adoption and more about necessity. Inflation was eating people alive. Traditional banking was—and still is—chaotic. When I got my first USDT payment from a writing client abroad, it wasn’t just “cool.” It was survival. That’s the thing western users sometimes miss: the normalcy of crypto isn’t always about comfort. Sometimes it’s about pressure. Systems collapse, and crypto sneaks in through the cracks. For us, that “normal” you’re feeling? It’s not a phase—it’s infrastructure now. Quietly, irreversibly.