Bitcoin has been hitting all-time highs again, and I guess it’s time for my bitcoin origin story.
Back in the early 2010s, I was a prolific proxy test-taker. My life was a blur of airports, exam centers, and hotel rooms all around the world, where I took the TOEFL, GRE, SAT, ACT, and GMAT exams on behalf of clients.
On any given day, I could be in Thailand taking the GRE in the morning, and by evening, sitting for the GMAT in Sri Lanka. Seven days a week, three exams a day—I lived and breathed the grind.😣
This intense schedule demanded nothing short of peak mental focus. Getting jet-lagged was never an excuse for bad testing performance. If I wasn’t focused during TOEFL listening sections, I’d miss critical details. On the ACT, speed-reading was essential to extract information quickly during the reading section. To push my limits, I turned to “smart drugs,” specifically modafinil.💊
Buying modafinil introduced me to Bitcoin. My Chinese credit cards wouldn’t go through on the website I found, and it suggested using Bitcoin for “easier processing.” Skeptical but curious, I created a blockchain.info wallet, jumped through hoops, and managed to buy Bitcoin. Ironically, in China at the time, it was easier to buy Bitcoin than to find a credit card that worked for dubious online purchases.
With $200 worth of Bitcoin(6 btc worth $500k+ today😱) in hand, I bought my first smart drugs.
The irony isn’t lost on me: over the years I’ve bought and spent one of the most jaw-dropping investments of our lifetime on smart drugs, just to raise my clients’ scores by a few points.
Taking modafinil regularly also gave me headaches. So I sacrificed both my financial potential and health to secure bright futures for y’all.💁🏻♀️
Without Crypto, a Peripheral Service Serving an International Clientele Couldn’t Survive for Long
I feel incredibly fortunate to live in an era where crypto exists. Along with Bitcoin’s rise, its utility is also very clear: transferring value without needing permission of middlemen. Without it, an international exam cheating service like ours that’s forever doomed to be in the shadows would be impossible to sustain—unless you’re a true money-laundering crime boss.
Looking back, it's crazy to see that in 2018 we charged a Korean customer 1.2 Bitcoins for their GRE score:
To me, Bitcoin is more than just a permissionless form of money; it’s a symbol of leveling the playing field, a middle finger to entrenched privilege. It gave an ordinary person like me a fighting chance - this is also exactly what we at Examinator are offering.
In fact, Bitcoin’s libertarian vibes resonated with me so deeply that, for a time, I made this Daisy persona wear Bitcoin like a badge of honor (see fan art by a past customer: https://examinator.blog/scores/396).
Then came the crypto bear market. It was brutal. Crypto became synonymous with scams, and people started throwing accusations: “You’re just another Bitcoin scam.” even if we were only using the transaction aspect of crypto and has never been some get-rich-quick crypto project.
With Bitcoin’s rise again, let’s not forget: those who gave it a shot when most people were too afraid or too lazy to try became very wealthy.
Taking counterintuitive actions early is how you rewrite the rules in your favor.
Next time we ask you to buy crypto, stay open-minded like I did back in 2013.
— Daisy
