CryptoDad

Chapter 15 The Winding Crypto Road

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?

It's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye.

But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

—Jack Kerouac (novelist), On the Road

Beside Still Waters

I was physically and emotionally exhausted when I stepped down from the CFTC. I had put every bit of energy I had into the job from the day I started until the day I left. I felt drained as I closed the chairman's office door behind me late in the evening on Sunday, July 14, 2019. Health Tarbert would enter that office at 9 a.m. the next morning.

My first bit of extended relaxation came in early September when Regina and I spent eight perfect summer days in Whipsaw Cottage at the Waldheim Resort on Big Moose Lake in the western Adirondacks. We swam in the early morning, took long walks in the mountains, and read by the fire in the evening. It provided plenty of time for rejuvenation, as well as reflection.

As I sat one morning beside Big Moose's north bay reading the news on my mobile phone, I thought about how the Internet had transformed the distribution of news and the business of journalism. In fact, over the course of much of my professional career, the Internet had transformed so many industries, from music (think Pandora and Spotify) and television (YouTube and Netflix), to retail shopping (Amazon and eBay) and local transportation ...