Jason Harris is a world-class American glass artist and founding father of Jerome Baker Designs, a number one practical glass firm based in 2003 and based mostly in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The feds seized my web site JeromeBaker.com throughout Operation Pipe Dreams, which was a federal effort to deliver these of us promoting bongs and pipes throughout state strains to justice. It was 2003. There weren’t loads of web site seizures occurring. The web didn’t actually begin in earnest till 1996. There wasn’t loads of regulation on the market at first. Porn was massive on the web. And then, shopping for and promoting drug paraphernalia caught on.
During Operation Pipe Dreams, when 55 of us had 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 they made it so it appeared prefer it was flying within the wind. It learn: “This website is property of the United States Department of Justice.”
It was the brand new equal of seizing my automobile or boat. Instead, they seized my web site. I purchased it again from someone for $700. It’s like getting an previous automobile again that acquired seized by the police. I really feel extremely blessed to be working off the unique area.
Attorney General John Ashcroft stated on the time: “With the advent of the internet, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has exploded. The drug paraphernalia business is now accessible in anyone’s home with a computer and internet access. And in homes across America we know that children and young adults are the fastest-growing internet users. Quite simply, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without their knowledge … Today, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force … has taken decisive steps to dismantle the illegal drug paraphernalia industry by attacking their physical, financial and internet infrastructures.”
This expertise led me early on to grow to be fascinated with bitcoin. I began taking bitcoin when it was most likely at about $600. It was enticing to me as a result of I might do enterprise with completely different components of the world and never be banned. Ask anybody within the hashish business: you’re continually having to cope with account closures, app closures, and so on. I do know these within the bitcoin business expertise the identical. Bitcoin was additionally enticing to me, as a result of I benefit from the “gray area” high quality of it.
Being ready to be a part of the unique Silk Road, having the ability to be enticing to those that needed to purchase issues on-line with out being seen, all go hand-in-hand with what I do: making bongs. I did have an inkling the bitcoin value was going to explode, so I used to be selling it as a lot as doable as a cost methodology on JeromeBaker.com.
I don’t blow glass anymore, except for a particular objective. For a time, one such particular objective was for purchasers who paid in bitcoin. I’d blow them a Slyme Bubbler for one bitcoin. They would ship bitcoin to Jerome Baker Designs’ public bitcoin deal with and electronic mail a transport deal with. I nonetheless bear 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 can purchase merchandise with bitcoin. Tesla accepted bitcoin for a time, and I’m certain they will once more. Ethereum and different altcoins are extra about hypothesis. Bitcoin has quantity and velocity, and it holds worth.
To me, bitcoin is the power to be a mover and a shaker, and empowers anybody to maintain a separate account with worth and never have to fear about it being shut down. Bitcoin is an ideal foreign money for all markets, as we’ve seen. It not solely lends itself properly to high-risk industries, as had been a giant a part of its story, but additionally for nation-states trying to shield their personal inhabitants’s from foreign money devaluation. Bitcoin is a biblical algorithm. It has modified humanity perpetually.
This is a visitor publish by Jason Harris. Opinions expressed are solely their personal and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
