How $5 Bitcoin Purchase Turned into $1.5 Million Viral Movement – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Mason Price, an emerging number cruncher, meme maker and aspiring author.
This article was originally published here.
Stack height 1762
Almost two months before he deleted his account, @ArizonanHODL tweeted an unassuming screenshot of a $5 Bitcoin purchase. Any ordinary person – and by “ordinary” I don’t mean a psychopathic, dark tetrad Bitcoin fanatic – wouldn’t have batted an eye, but those of us familiar with Bitcoin Twitter know that the community, like Bitcoin itself, is an unstoppable force even through a bear market. This was the case for @ArizonanHODL’s tweet, from which a new Bitcoin subculture full of stacking bet and creating memes was born.
@ArizonanHODL terminated his account when the Stackchain genesis block hit 669 likes. A bittersweet conclusion.
What is Stackchain?
Stackchain is the gamification of stacking bets with other Bitcoin plebs. It all takes place on a single Twitter thread consisting of screenshots of bitcoin purchases called “blocks”. Each block is $1 more than the previous one, and the last block, known as the “tip”, can be found by searching the hashtag #stackchaintip and sorting by last.
@7noBodywins (formerly @satskeeper)
The story goes like this: @ArizonanHodl posts his $5 bitcoin buy, @Happyclowntime aka Bob followed it up with a $6 buy and Satskeeper followed Bob’s with a $7 buy. You can see where this is going and so did Bitcoin twitter. Within a few weeks, Stackchain had drawn in 400 unique plebs to stack on Stackchain. The $1 incremental purchases have continued and there is no end in sight.
Stackchain achievements
Many plebs have speculated that Stackchain is the single largest thread on Twitter, and that’s not the only crazy Stackchain statistic. In eight weeks, Stackchain participants went from buying just $5 in bitcoin to a whopping $1.5 million in bitcoin cumulatively, or in bitcoin terms, from accumulating a few thousand stakes to over 7.5 billions rate (75 bitcoins).
Stackchainers not only have an undeniable goal of growing stacks, but they also aim to promote Bitcoin adoption. Coordinating fundraising for Bitcoin-related initiatives is very much in line with this goal. Here are a few projects Stackchain has donated to:
- Stacks For Bitcoin Beach: An initiative where Stackchainers raised over $6,000 to help fund Bitcoin education in El Salvador.
Link to embedded tweets one and two.
- Flashstack for Bitcoin Ekasi: The donations funded the purchase of ~30 phones for children in an African township so they could have the opportunity to learn about Bitcoin by working for and earning rewards in Bitcoin.
- Flashstack For Hodlonaut: Stackchainers raised several thousand dollars using the tag #Stacks4Hodlonaut to help fund Hodlonaut in his legal battle against Craig Wright, aka Faketoshi.
Rules and Stackchain Improvement Proposals (SIPs)
Stackchain’s ruleset continues to grow. For a deeper dive into the ruleset and Stackchain apps, check out our GitHub here.
Three important Stackchain components to remember:
- Stack joins
A stackjoin is when several plebs combine their Bitcoin purchases so that the sum of all purchases equals the stack height. As an example, let’s say the stack height is $500. 5 people can each stack $100 and include all purchases in link and/or image form in the stackjoined block. Tag your Bitcoin purchase #stackjoin and it will be added to the stackjoin mempool. It can be as little as $1. - Solo blocks
This is when someone buys the total block. To do so, find the Stackchain tip and comment the amount of the previous purchase +$1 directly to the tip. - Forks
This happens when two or more people stack the same block and create a chain split. These forks can continue for several blocks as stackers fight over which fork will win. This was the case for many blocks, including blocks 888, 1492, and the three forks currently being resolved.
Stackchain whales have been a great help in increasing stack height and leaderboards have been a fun way to gamify stack rate. From the leaderboards, we can see that stackjoins have become an ever-increasing contributor to increasing stack height. They have steadily grown to the largest spot on the leaderboards and are expected to continue to do so as the blocks become more expensive.
Stackjoins is tied for third on the block count leaderboard and is fourth on the cuckbucks burned leaderboard
The Stackchain timeline
Stacked blocks per day and bitcoin purchased per day
In memory of our beloved @ArizonanHODL’s Twitter account.
This is a guest post by Mason Price. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
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