“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” -Kali Linux

“IYKYK, When you hash a Genesis block, you give the first Txn rewards to the Greater Merkle System, no one gets them.” -Proteu5

| By: Proteu5

| Written: 2021

| Published: 2022

While the events depicted are based on a true story, all names and identities of individuals, corporations, businesses, and coins have been redacted so as to protect their anonymity.

A story about one man’s battle with addiction, privacy, anonymity and the great Bitcoin Race. If you thought 2021-2022 was unforgiving with Scams, Rugs, and Fake Collections, you’ve never seen the dark side of crypto. This, is how it began for all of us.

Hindsight is a killer, but also a saving grace. It’s all about perspective and how one looks at any one situation that determines one’s present state of mind.

Well, you’re reading this, so that one plus, I guess I can say. The fact that I made it out alive to write this piece is a blessing in it of itself. If I had played my cards differently, this story would never have been told. Think of it as my last saving grace.

This isn’t a success story, at least not the success stories you are used to, though there is a great success that is to be had. This isn’t a treatise, though I can write one for you. This is more, one for the record books, so that my story can be told. I did the best I could with what I had at the time and if I did more I would be dead.

We were soldiers, but not of the military kind. We had no leader, until I stepped up in my own microcosm. There were others who fought along side me and still others against me, but we were all in it for the same cause. No one single person shouted to rally us, we all just seemed to rally ourselves; much like a magnet with its attractive pull.

So, what was it all for, money or the cause? It’s 2021[2022 - Publication Time] now, and my cache is dry or near dry yet the bull inside of me ceases to die. “You can’t kill an idea.” So, who am I and why should you even read this? I’m just another ‘Anon’, and this is my perspective.

I. Fearless Protocol

The Fearless Protocol is a mandatory security upgrade for the management and Dev. Team of **********. This system is a combination of both off-line and online security measures, counter measures, and protocols necessary for secured communication.

The founding fathers of the United States drafted the Declarations of Independence in secret, and the Constitution in private. The windows and doors were shut, the sweltering heat boiled the members of our young Government; bugs stung, and flies contaminated their water. No one left, no one entered. This was done to ensure no on-looker, or interested snooper would discover and leak information that was wrong or spoken at a wrong time out of turn; being overheard through discussions or ramblings. They weren’t worried about information leaking per-say, but more so that would be inevitably public; they were worried about information from in-room debates that were not official yet, leaking. [Think DAO only Revolutionary Era]

This information could lose the distrust of some and win favors of others. If one person was to listen in at the wrong point in time, people would[may] distrust the system.

Even though we are a transparent Dev. Team, I feel that we must operate at this level in order to plan, design, and implement the best changes and innovations to **********. We won’t agree on everything, that is a given, but having a safe-haven to discuss our ideas is paramount. This is the heart of the Fearless Protocol.

-January 29th 2014 - 9:11PM

That was written by me during the hight of my involvement in the Bitcoin Race. To me, and to us, Bitcoin was[is] a revolution. It wasn’t a way to turn a profit.

II. Human Connectome Project

What motivates us? A question I asked myself in my college level psychology course. I was deep into learning about human behavior and research psychology. I was also on my third college. It was my job to make a habit out of studying people, groups of people, and why people did certain things in any given situation. I loved the field, but I wanted more for myself. I wanted my name in lights with my own discovery, my own research paper. You can’t blame me for wanting a purpose in life. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the greater good and the fame, naturally, so to speak.

Every day I would walk to class, sit in my chair and take notes like the good student I was. What my teachers and friends didn’t know was that I was popping Vicodin daily to make to it class, it was the only way I could function. I loved that sexy ‘V’ cut. [Shh…It gets bad before it gets good]

Who was I? This first year at school number three, I was a secret drug addict who wanted to be known for groundbreaking psychological research. I made friends with social media in-between classes and found myself on Twitter looking up research papers, and other useful information. It was strange, but I came across a project, “The Human Connectome Project”. Terebytes of data were being collected on the Neuro-Mappings of the human minds of participants. This study would lead to groundbreaking new evidence, theories, treatments, and more. I quickly signed up as a student researcher and looked at what was necessary to perform my research. The mappings were in 3D so I needed a PC that could render 3D. I also had to be able to sift through hard drives full of data, the machine had to do that too; it had to process data in Teraflops. On top of it all each drive costs a few hundred dollars. I was a broke college student who could barely support his illicit habit.

I made a decision and got a job, it was a minimum wage job and would help me along me way with the new PC. Now, I didn’t just want any PC I wanted a powerful one for my research and data points. I took to Twitter in-between classes and began my research into custom PCs and how to build my own PC. This was going to be fun, I loved technology and the thought of mixing technology with Psychology was a great idea.

I take my savings from work a few months later and purchased all the necessary parts for my new PC, it turns out I had to build a gaming PC to be able to handle the research. Once it was built, I marveled at my creation and even Tweeted to the companies of the parts I bought, I was so proud of my creation.

I followed a few accounts on-line, and even the CEO of my CPU had an account back then ‘*******’ was his name. Then, Twitter did something to me. The CEO of the CPU company I followed, did something to me. He Tweeted about this thing called ‘Bitcoin’ (~Circa 2012/2013).

Now as a college student, who was studying to be a researcher, I did what I knew best. I researched. I dug. I researched some more.

Tell me, how one can stumble upon the “Wild West” and ignore it. I was young, Bitcoin was young, $200/BTC young and I was searching for a purpose in my life. I wanted to make that name for myself. I looked at what this 'Satoshi Nakamoto’ had done with his life, he had and was changing the world, changing the financial system - I saw this in ~2012 before it had materialized. I saw the boom of individuals creating their own coins to join in the cause, and then the corporations joined in too. I saw it all as a field researcher. But I wanted more than to observe from the sidelines, I wanted to be in the arena. I yearned to be in the fight, to get dirty and say, “I was there and I did this!” Hell, I had no clue I would be erased from history, or even that the arena I was about to step in was so cut-throat. I was a doped up college student with a dream and a ‘fleeting-cause’. Until, I fell into Bitcoin’s rabbit hole.

Let me paint a picture of the “Wild West” of the Crypto-landscape in 2013; No one used their real names, everyone operated from behind a VPN (Virtual Private Network)[TOR/I2P], to scramble their locations. Scams were common place, in fact if you weren’t scamming, you were getting scammed. A few true soldiers did exist but they were few and far between. Those were that ‘Unicorns’ that really were in it for the long-haul vision, and those teams made it through to today. Many sought innovation. Many sought profit and even didn’t mean to scam. It was chaos. Imagine the nuclear arms race, and the inventor of the atomic bomb makes his formula public for its creation to all of the nations [This actually happened]. How fast do you think you and your country would scramble to begin assembling weapons and energy solutions. Would you keep it the same, would you improve it? It was an informational arms race and we were all competing for computing power [mining power (Hashrates)] of the network. New Cryptocurrencies would pop-up every day with new algorithms and ‘Improvements to the Network’. New teams were forming overnight and everyone was operating from behind their masks. No one knew who to trust, no one was in control, but we all followed one, Bitcoin.

I woke up hungover from my pill habit. Popped another pill after last nights research into the early hours of the morning, 4AM I believe, and then headed to classes. Things were different that day. I saw the world differently. It was like I had just visited the center of the Earth, seen its molten core, and knew it was about to erupt. Yet, here stood the average person[people] going about their lives, oblivious to the storm that was to come. It was like being in a movie, and I was the star of my own film; very Persona-non grata.

I had arrived, I had found my cause, my purpose in life. I would join the ‘Freedom Fighters’, the Revolutionaries, and unite with them in a double life to help further the Greater Cause.

I can’t speak for Satoshi Nakamoto, but I can speak from what I saw. The Elite who controlled our banking system were corrupt and our money wasn’t safe. This was the narrative I spun and told myself early on. How I got that idea in my head, when the White Paper for Bitcoin was a Peer-to-Peer cashless system based on mathematics, I do not know. I was impregnated with the idea. It was all consuming. I felt like Neo in the Matrix, waking up for the first time [Possibly From Articles On I2P and Information from TOR].

I was done being a researcher I wanted in, and I wanted to be apart of it. I found a Crowdfunded page, an author was writing a book about Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto. If I paid, I could have my name in it. This was my Declaration of Independence. I paid and got my name in the credits of the book. I signed my ‘Declaration Of Freedom’.

It was just enough, but not for long, I wanted to leave my own legacy also. This is what I planned while I was in class: I came to the decision that I would learn all there is to learn about “Crypto” and I would make my own coin. I was going to have to learn how to code C++. I was going to have to learn about Mining, inside and out, and I was going to have to assemble a team of crack-pot college students.

III. Rise of the Machines

Living at home meant low cost of living, for the time being. This meant I had money to invest in my new little venture. I did take side jobs doing web development for extra cash, but that usually went to supporting my habit, my fuel for life. [Forgive my bluntness]

School had ended for the semester and I had a break, so I took advantage of it. I bought 'Tech Yourself C++ in 24 Hours’ a book on learning how to code. At the same time I began dissecting the source code to Bitcoin as I learned the fundamentals of C++. All the while, converting my gaming machine into a Bitcoin/Alt-coin mining Rig.

I wasn’t foreign to code, I picked up Delphi and Visual Basic while I was in my youth. This gave me a solid base. It was early on that I learned to Reverse Engineer source code. I’m not talking Valgrind and Memory Debugging, that was too advanced so early on, but reading and understanding other’s OpenSource source code and learning from their creations in order to craft my own.

So, that week, I scoured the house looking for old PCs and laptops and then turned them all into my own mini-mining farm. But I was too late, the big giants with large amounts of capital had already driven up the mining difficulty making it impossible to really turn a profit for the little guy. If I was going to compete and truly earn some ‘coin’ I would have to invest more.

You see, the exchanges started charging nearly 2 Bitcoin to get listed on their platform. Marketing agencies wanted their cut too. It was a costly venture, one I couldn’t fund while working at a Book Store.

It was around this time that I purchased my first Bitcoin, I needed it to buy mining equipment. I ordered my miner and a week later it came in the mail. I connected it to a Raspberry Pi that I programmed in Linux, also something that I learned myself, and fired it up. My bedroom was a steady 77 degrees. It was hot in there, but the sound of my miners put me to sleep at night, that and the pills.

(I think in total, throughout the entirety of these events and venture I had procured about 12 Bitcoins.)

I truly had bought into the vision, I believed in everything Bitcoin stood for. During the day I was a book-keep and at night I was a soldier, a freedom fighter, for the cause, mining to support the network and even to turn a profit so that I could further my vision and idea.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was satisfied, all expect my insatiable need for a legacy. I wanted to be remembered and having my name in a book was only the beginning. Opportunity fell into my lap and I was going to capitalize on it.

I would get little to no sleep each night from the excitement. I spent all day and all night coding, researching, and monitoring the systems. No one knew who I was online, I operated under a pseudonym and no one online knew the amount of work and passion I had and was putting in.

It was an unhealthy balance fueled by opiates and desire. It wouldn’t be until the year 2016 the my opiate craze ended, but we have ways to go before then. We are still, only around the year 2013-2014.

A lot happens in technology, they say three weeks is like three months in tech. I wasn’t going to let a second pass me by. I made my time buying Linux Magazines, Hacker Quarterly Issues, and Programming books.

Each day at work I would look for the newest thing in technology to stay up to date. It was a lot of work, but I made good use of my time. I even snuck a few orders for miners in while on the job, but shhhh… It was at this time that I couldn’t afford to mine Bitcoin directly without some serious capital and had to switch to Litecoin, also known as a Scrypt based mining coin. It was fun compiling BFGMiner and CGMiner from source on my micro-controllers. I had project after project, after project, to keep me busy and all the time in the world.

It was also around this time that I graduated in my opiate use to heavier chemicals. That was who I was, a drugged up Book-keep who moonlighted as a Crypto-Freedom Fighter. (No, I never used Silk Road. I don’t care how Anonymous you are, but when you materialize Internet Things to Real-Life addresses, they become traceable. I stayed away.)

The days started to meld together because of my drug use, and I didn’t know if I was asleep or awake. I was in the Matrix, no, the Matrix had me.

IV. Rally The Team

Before I address how I assembled a team, I feel it important to note that this wasn’t the first time I assembled a team in my life.

I grew up in the 90s baby, and I learned the in’s and out’s of the internet while I was seven years old. I learned back then from my research how to fake my age online. I might not have been doing drugs at a young age, but I was still searching for that solace, that place to call my own. I may have lied to a couple of hackers and programmers about my age and knowledge level, but I formed a programming team, and developed my own software company at age seven. Too bad it was erased from existence also. However, I think I still have a signature with Norton Antivirus floating around somewhere in the depths of the Internet. Our software wasn’t exactly main-stream media worthy.

Even as I write this, I wonder why would anyone want to hear about my journey into crypto, and read about my life. Sure, I have much to teach in overcoming addiction and am successful in that avenue of my life. But Crypto? I’m no Winklevoss. I’m no Bitcoin Billionaire. I’m just a humble Anonymous member of an Internet Forum that launched a revolutionary new financial system for the planet, among several hundred others. I’m not apart of the Core Bitcoin Dev-Team and our project was erased from the internet. We went too hard on the anonymity. All that remains was the vision that I had held onto and a name in the credits of a book, a book that I didn’t write but wish I had. That and my ‘Lambo Dream’…

As I take you through my journey, if you learn anything from me, learn from my mistakes. But also know, if I wasn’t a drug addict, I wouldn’t have met the most amazing woman in the world in my sobriety. Do I wish that I had bought more Bitcoin back then, “Yes!”

Do I wish I had done things differently, “Yes! Would I? No!”

Then, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I most likely would be dead. A snippet in the newspaper and a sad story for my friends and family.

The worst part, my anonymous online identity and the work I did would have died with me too. However, that is not this story, I am alive. I made it out of the rabbit hole alive. I can’t have any regrets because I am alive and what I have is a story to tell.

This story is a message to the corporations. We all grew up out the “Wild West” days of crypto, I saw you all there. We all saw what government involvement can do and did. “Coinbase, Remember the era before KYC? I Know, it’s hard to imagine.”

But we all must stay true to the vision and remember where we came from. If I wasn’t an addict, I would be standing beside you all with my creation. Yet, the cards played out differently for me because of me. So let my small voice be heard, and let this washed up Crypto-Cowboy teach you something about life. This is how I had to build my name and my team.

“We’re going to need to assume Anonymous names online and register for this Forum. We’re going to operate behind VPNs so as to protect ourselves…”

We didn’t know if the government is going to come after us all for what we are doing here with Bitcoin, no one knew.

“They may even attempt to regulate us when word gets out, but rest assured, word will get out and this is going to be big…”

“You, ‘X’, will be our Quantum Engineer, we need one, other projects have one. Also you are our programmer and mathematician. Use your position at the Particle Accelerator Lab as leverage. I will work on the core of the source code in C++. You, ‘XY’, will head Marketing, Design, and PR. Use your education in Business Marketing to leverage the media. And you, ‘XYZ’, will learn C++ as I did and assist me with the core and other releases, you will also assume my old role of researcher and keep tabs on the industry and markets, as I can’t do that anymore. I must split my time. ‘XY’, will provide funding for the domain and hosting for the project, I will handle the coding of the website as well. I will also handle our PGP keys, ciphers, and cryptography. ‘X’, we need you to develop a mathematical equation that I will turn into code that improves the Halving Algorithm of Bitcoin and allows for the Mining Difficulty to fluctuate with a better Block Retarget Time.”

We each passed the Hookah around the table and took a hit as we sat in silence around the table. This was big for us all. We were all in.”

“X, XY, and XYZ, we’re going to need a name. ********Coin. What do you all say, do you agree?”

“Agreed.” X.

“Agreed.” XY.

“Agreed.” XYZ.

“Now, the question of a Pre-Mine…We will not take profits before out miners, it will be a fair launch. I have enough equipment for us to make money later on to support the project. Let’s build something that lasts.”

I took my last drag of the hookah and paid with a visa rebate card. My funds were low. In fact XYZ, XY, and X all didn’t have jobs either. We did odd jobs but were college students, and none of us were in technology formally.

Some might say, we had no place being in crypto. Some may even argue that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the blockchain’s checkpoints as time went on. I would prove them wrong, surely I would.

We were the underdogs. I had learned C++ on my own accord through guides and books I had bought at my job. “XY”, was still studying Marketing in school, and “X”, was on his internship at the Particle Accelerator lab, CERN.

“X” came back to me not only with a formula for an Exponential Decay Function but with it written in C code. It was beautiful. Our coin would Halve, never touching zero, in a unique way. It would go on for infinity, yet be balanced by scarcity in difficulty. It had its own unique halving rate to and the transactions would be quick on the network. We decided on our max supply and customized the source code to Litecoin, it was to be ‘Scrypt’ based. Sure, the Idea was to create a limited supply. We were the first with an infinite halving algo at a limited scarce supply. Our formula ensured that we would never run out of coins for over a hundred years.

Who’s to say we couldn’t have our piece of the pie. That was the whole purpose of Bitcoin, “One CPU one Vote”. That quickly went out the windows with the rise of ASIC Miners (Application Specific Integrated Circuit - Miners). This gave rise to the wealthy being to control of the markets, with their mining power driving up difficulty. We couldn’t afford to mine Bitcoin as it was intended, it was for the wealthy even back then. Where were four broke college students supposed to fit in? We should have just bought Bitcoin and kept our mouths shut, but where’s the fun in that. I think we all wanted our names in the Bitcoin/Crypto legacy.

Again, why tell my story? Why not, I think there are so many other coin devs who had their journey and they all disappeared.

Not all of them were scams, I refuse to believe that. Who are they now, did they give up on crypto? Did they cash out and leave. Are they living off the grid? Did some of them come out of the chaos to be Billionaires in their own right?

I know what it’s like to be alive and live through one of the most exciting times this planet has ever seen. A time when one man changed the world with his vision and Cryptography. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? I know who I am, and I hope that my actions embodied his vision enough, I’m a failed Alt-Coin Dev., Team Leader. I gave up and spent more Bitcoin on our coin than I wished I had. Today, “Do I wish I had that buying power or do I wish I had the experience? I’ll go with the experience.”

I hope the company’s that came out of the chaos remember who they are. They are the Gate Keepers to Bitcoin today.

I read it on the Forums, “Anything that threatens Bitcoin, is doomed from the start.” I have seen this statement fulfilled time and time again.

Here I am ranting about the past, about a silly little forum that existed one time, that housed a “Gold Rush” for a brief period of time. Why does it matter? This little forum that existed somewhere on the vast World Wide Web gave me my purpose in life, it gave me a vision, and still does to this today. I carry that vision with me. I may not be the same person, but if you enter into a conversation with me about Bitcoin, I will lead you down the Rabbit Hole, same as I had. You may not always come out wealthy, but you will see what I’ve seen and that, that is priceless. So let me lead you deeper in. Let me guide you on my journey, because you may not have even known that the ‘Beast' existed until the news spoke the words ‘Bitcoin’ for the first time.

It’s important to note how my story ends. Remember, this isn’t a success story, but more so a journey through time.

V. A Call To Arms

Believe me when I tell you, this is going to be big.

If you believed me in 2014, you would be a millionaire today. Why am I not a millionaire, simply put I was too high all the time. That’s why I’m not there, Yet. (I’ve since learned to code in Solidity, Ethereum’s language. I’ve also built up a team. I’ve done it again, but sober this time. It’s happening again, and I found new “Wild West” but I am getting ahead of myself now. Back to the story…)

I rallied my team around more than the idea of great profits. I rallied them around the idea of Bitcoin and a new financial system. A way for people around the Globe to transact. We were as if we were our own Country and like magic, we minted our our currency. And it all became very real at 3:00 AM one night. “XYZ” and I hashed the Genesis Block for our coin on Testnet and it came alive. We really should have tested our software more and ran a public Testnet beta event back then. We weren't software engineers, and didn’t know the in’s and the out’s of software  development releases. All we knew was that we tested the Damn thing, and when we were ready we knew how to release it and then maintain it with updates. We were so disorganized. It’s was like giving a new driver a Ferrari as their first car. Sure, you can drive it, but It was bound to end in disaster and me leading from the helm in addiction did not help the cause.

But who were we compared to these other Coins. They were professional programmers and had professional marketing teams. They did this for a living. I had to remind myself, we did have a Quantum Engineer. It was our advantage over the market and our way of competing for the networks Hashrate.

At this time there were hundreds, if not a thousands different coins to mine. Today, there are maybe 5 left over from the days of the “Wild West”, that should tell you something.

Knowing all of this, that we only had one unique angle, I lead the team into the World of Crypto. “Were we doomed from the start? I’m not sure…” We did have a unique product, and enough development knowledge from books, forums, analysis’s, and research to position ourselves, not on top but right in the middle. It would be perfect. We would slip under radar and be classified as a mid-cap coin. Litecoin and their team wouldn’t notice us, WorldCoin would be on top of us and we would fit somewhere below FeatherCoin and TakiCoin. We had it all figured out, or so we thought.

I met with “X” for drinks one night.

“Hey Proteu5, have you ever heard of Circada 3301?”

“Yes, I have.”

We broke bread and filled our stomaches with shots of whisky and Jack and Cokes. The bartenders there knew me as I frequented that bar often, so my drinks were always double. By the fifth, they were free. He never watered them down for me, I always tipped like the wealthy coin-dev that I was, Haha.

That night I continued to work on the source code while “XYZ” worked on the forum posts. I needed to cross-compile the code for releases on Windows, Max OS X, and compile a guide for Linux building by Source Code. It was fun. Our project was nearing completing. We had left our PCs running over night and our Testnet was hashing and minting coins as it was supposed to. It was beautiful and I shed a tear in wonder and awe. This was going to work. It was about 1:00AM and I sent screenshots to the team showing them the success on our Testnet runs. We were actually going to pull this off. It was too cool and going too smoothly.

Now, I needed to arrange for a Mining Pool. The Pools were scripted in Javascript and used complex databases. I wasn’t there yet on my coding journey. Plus, I would need to secure a server to Host the pool. This was an issue. I looked around on the forums and found a few larger Pools and began B2B discussions over Skype with these pool operators. They were more than obliged to come to our aid for a share in the coins, plus they loved our Quantum concept. It was all going so well. After the pool was secured we would need to be listed on an exchange. We reached out and contacted all the big names but they turned us down every time. It figures that *** and ***** were both sued in the years to come for corruption. The exchange we ultimately ended up going with is still around and cracking today. Nonetheless, we interfaced with the Owner/Operator, paid the two Bitcoin fee to be listed and we were ready for our launch.

I sent the source code to the pool operator and compiled wallet files to the Exchange operator. We signed our release files with our group PGP key, verified by a secure Protonmail account and we were ready.

We got “X” onto the forum to start posting his mathematical formulas about the coin. This was really our first public appearance on the great stage of the forums. There were a thousand coins before us and tens of thousands of miners and investors going to see our [Announcement]. This was going to be big. I hosts the files for download and the ensured the website was live. Instead of pictures and names, our Pseudonyms were blazon across the page under our coin’s name. We were ecstatic.

We made sure to pay for SSL and Domain Name Registry Privacy. This would ensure that our real identities couldn’t be traced, as we paid with Credit Card. “XY”, did a lot for us. He funded most all of the marketing and designed all of our graphics, logos, and coin icons for the core-software. I funded the B2B relations and payoffs. You know, today, they call it “Listing Pair Fees” but back then you paid off people to be popular. You either had a popular coin and were voted onto an exchange or you paid the owners in Bitcoin to get a listing pair. Today, it hasn’t changed. In fact, I’m sure you can’t even get voted onto an exchange anymore, but don’t quote me on that. Hence the wild west nature of things.

It was the price we paid for success, “Was it fair, I don’t know, but why not.” We were the underdogs and we found someone respectful enough to take us on, us, a no name team with no following. We weren’t equipped enough to fight the system, yet, besides it was all young and forgivable, and the exchange we found didn’t start the trend.

I say this all respectful because my old logins still work in 2021, plus they are still legally operating! This was not a Mt. Gox scandal, just a business owner like ourselves.

Any way, that day was going to be our launch day.

VI. Let’s Go Live

Holy Shit! That’s what we came to when I got back from work that night. I logged into the Forum and saw that our [ANN] Thread had exploded! People were demanding the release of our software. I hadn’t yet put the files up for download and we were still on Testnet. They were yelling at us, calling us, “A Ninja Launched Coin” because we did a private Testnet and came out of no where.

We also didn’t pre-mine which won us over in favor of the coins that did. They were profit hungry and greedy. A Pre-mine was a hard-coded block in the source code that when mined would drop something like 25% of the total supply of the coin in the block. Normally, the block reward would yield something like 50 Coins per block. But these teams who pre-mine before the launch of their Mainnet, until they hit the hard coded block and then release the wallet files to the public for consumption. It was a corrupt practice, and the coin-devs would then sell off the pre-mined coins on an exchange prior to the rest of the miners and then close up shop, and run away with the money. Hence, the “Wild West” scam-coin that we so often saw.

I think people were relived to see our dedication in our white paper. We didn’t use our real names, but we lead with our research and knowledge. We lead with our hearts and souls and people saw that. Classes were about to start again for me so we had to release the code before I had to start attending again.

I got “XYZ” on the phone and said, “It’s going to be a long night, we’re going live!”

“XYZ” said, “Let’s do it, I’m ready.”

I ran downstairs and hooked up my four massive Scrypt ASIC mining units, 30 Megahashs/second each (You can laugh at that rate today). They were expensive and cost me numerous Bitcoins, one was however free for my work in writing their Tutorials. Basically, they didn’t have a control board and you had to provide your own. My guide was used for their customers to create their own control boards, and as payment I got a 3rd unit for free.

I connected my units and pointed them to my coin’s server. “XYZ”, put his wallet online and I did mine. With our two wallets online we had our first nodes up on our own network. Next, we had the miners on stand-by. “XYZ”, had his Scrypt based ASICs ready as well.

“XYZ” sent me the forum post that he had crafted, I added in the download links for the Coin’s Wallet and posted the Announcement Post that we were live. I edited the original Post to reflect the changes and our thread rose to the Top of [ANN] listing giving us our ‘5-minuets of Fame’ spotlight with the bump. All we needed to get a few miners on our side.

Within minuets our pool operator got on phone with us and said, “Oh Shit! You guys went live! I’ll get you up ASAP!” Apparently, in the 15min it took for us to go live people already started demanding he, the pool operator, list our coin on the pool for mining. People wanted a way to mine our project. We fumbled but recovered and almost forgot to point our miners to the pool.

Then I emailed the exchange operator and he said that we were golden. I updated the [ANN] thread and posted the link to our exchange pair. Bitcoin to Our Coin. It was perfect. It was also about 2:00AM at this time. I called “X” and got him on the forum, people were asking advanced mathematical questions and we needed him to answer them. The thread exploded, we didn’t get 5-minuets of fame, we were the fame. We ninja launched a coin with a new mathematical hashing algorithm.

It was at this time that all the hype was integrating something called the “Kimoto Gavity Well” a retargeting difficulty formula that effected the miners and core algorithms and functions of the coin. While our coin exploded I began reading over the Gravity Well, seeing what the source code did and began testing it that night.

In one night our hash rate skyrocketed, it made my ASIC miners look like an old PC from the 1980s. We lost 51% of the mining power and the pool was responsible for nearly 75%. The power went to three other pools that listed us without our knowledge. All of this over night.

I went to bed a 10AM that morning on a Sunday.

Monday morning, Classes are in session. I let my miners run, confident that they were running the night before, and I left for the day. I saw on my phone that the thread had blown up even more, but I couldn’t post, not without a VPN. I called “XYZ”, and gave him the Main Account’s password and told him that I trust him to post on my behalf.

After class, I rushed home that day and got back to our coin. We had earned in one 24-hour period over 100,000 Coins of our own, mined and minted. I checked the exchange and at the current going rate, in one day we earned, $10,000.00. That’s $10,000/Day. No wonder people we running these scam-coins up and down the gamut.

ethereum://0x6a5ff3ceecae9ceb96e6ac6c76b82af8b39f0eb3/9096

Fuck me, that’s a lot of money. I called the team and we were all in agreement, if we pull out, public sentiment would be that we were another scam coin and we would not change the world the way we wanted. We were in it for the long haul, not the quick money. So we held. We continued to stay the Top Coin on the [ANN] thread for days.

Just a few days later, after answering routine questions on the forum and doing work on the Kimoto Gravity Well, I picked up an issue of Eye Spy magazine from my former job and ordered the Spy Glasses on the back cover. They came quick, about a four days shipping time. I just remember being in a daze putting them on walking into the common area of my university and sitting on a couch in the glass room lounge with the sun shining in.

Listen, it’s corny, but when you and your team are earning $10k/Day you can do weird eccentric things.

A gentleman sat down next to this goofy, doped up Coin-Dev., wearing sunglasses indoors. He puts his books down next to me and says, “I work at the New York Times, have you ever heard of Bitcoin.”

I want to respond out of excitement, but gather my composure instead, “I have, in fact I may even have my own Alt-Coin.”

“That’s awesome, I configured the servers there to mine Litecoin for me, don’t tell anyone, but, what’s the name of your coin?”

“Our coin is **********.”

“Holy Shit! You’re the ones who are stealing all of the hashing power from all of the other coins. If you need a job, come find me.”

He got up and left. I checked the pools that were mining our coin, and he was right. All of the other scrypt coins had dropped in mining power and even Litecoin miners were pointed at our coin. We did it, we launched a successful Coin!

You really should know, that in life, nothing is this perfect. You can almost guess what happened next.

VII. Et Tu Brute

Yeah, at $10,000/Day it was too rich for the our little pool operator to pass on. He controlled more than 51% of our network. He launched a 51% attack, found a vulnerability in our coin and took the profits and ran. Something to that effect, it’s a little foggy at best.

When people saw such a big “rug pull” they thought it was us, the dev team. Everyone began to sell and there was a run on the exchange. We were screwed by the pool operator. My Skype Account got hacked, and ‘Shit hit the fan’. When you’re just the small guy and life happens like this, it’s bad, but you recover. When you’re the most popular coin, let me restate that, when you get so popular that you steal hashing power from the most popular coin, and shit hits the fan, you better duck and cover.

Disaster Recovery time: I issued a statement on the website. We made a post on the forum thread. We turned off our miners. Shut down our nodes. We disappeared. People will come after us as if they think we took the money and ran, even though it wasn’t us. This was our legacy, a failed Coin, because we were too stupid and blind to see the fact that we had trusted too much in other people.

A part of me didn’t want to believe that we misplaced our trust. A part of me wanted to believe that we were being tested. That the police of the “Wild West” found us and hacked us to test us. A part of me believed that Anonymous hacked us because we got too big too fast, and took away from their coin and Litecoin. Oh yes, Anonymous had their own Coin too. I even mined some of theirs before deciding to launch our own.

With that being said and done, I am proud to say that I was in the arena with Bitcoin, NameCoin, DevCoin, Litecoin, Anonymous Coin, DogeCoin, Ethereum, DigiByte, Z-Cash, Monero and more. I competed with a team as a Gladiator in the Stadium. Thousands of coins eventually fell, it wasn’t just us. I can list all of the other coins that lived but the notable ones that we ran along side with for our 15-minuets are listed above and are still around today. We even saw the first airdrop ever, ArouraCoin.

I am proud to say that I ran along side with these Dev Teams. Our team was in the fight, we were defeated but we were in the fight none the less.

“X”, pulled out and we went separate ways for some time. “XY", shut down his miners and put his wallets in cold-storage. “XYZ”, kept close contact with me and we kept mining coins together under new assumed identities. I believe, if I’m not mistaken, we took a liking for the new craze, Dark Coins, anonymous coins on the TOR network. We made a habit of supporting DogeCoin Dark with our miners. I made a point to begin dissecting DarkCoin and how the anonymous transactions worked. Z-Cash was just a white paper at the time and Zk-Snarks were still being formulated. “XYZ” and myself mined so many DogeCoin Dark coins that we were sitting pretty. So we used our DogeCoin and our Dark coins to play Market Maker, and did something nice. We pumped volume into the coin and instead of taking out liquidity like other miners, we supported the exchange pairs for the Dev teams on a couple of exchanges and held our DogeCoinDark coins for the future that was to come.

“XYZ” and I had fun on the markets, and then one day he told me, “I need to study for an exam.” I respected his wishes and knew that he was telling me, he was out. He had plenty of exams during our times mining together, this time he felt the need to tell me. What he was saying was, “I’m tapping out.”

I was left alone, again, with no coin, all of my miners and the vast “Wild West” to play in. So I did what I do best, popped a pill and got busy.

I was determined to learn how these anonymous transactions would work, but my doped up brain couldn’t get around the math, and my Quantum Engineer was back to work at CERN. And I had to get close to one of the Dev teams.

**** Coin popped up, so I made my way into the back-IRC channels to reach out to them. They were a wonderful team, I even had the chance to see and examine *** code (Don’t Forget or Disrespect That Name). It was a work of art. At this point I pulled my head out of the Rabbit Hole and realized where I was. I don’t want to say for sure as I write this, but I think that I was in communication with the programming arm of Anonymous. If that was true and was the case, they the some of the most brilliant programming engineers I have ever come across. I think one of them even had a hand in helping to development Zk-Snarks with a college professor, but I have no evidence to support that statement. I was out of my element and my, “Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours” book knowledge wasn’t going to help me learn the Obelisk Library. It was an anonymous transaction library that was being implemented into the source code of DarkCoins.

As an aside, Bitcoin is not anonymous, you can mine on Tor, but the transactions are public. You can use a third party coin-mixing service but that is external to the coin itself. These Dark coins aimed at making transactions anonymous.

If my team wasn’t going to help me, I would do it myself. I continued to mine Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Digibyte. All the while learning C++ more and more each day.

ethereum://0x6a5ff3ceecae9ceb96e6ac6c76b82af8b39f0eb3/9096

VIII. AI, You Say?

“Do chase your vision, and never give up.” Popular mining company, Bitmain-Tech not only sold Bitcoin and Scrypt Coin mining equipment but they also got into the not well known Artificial Intelligence industry with their AI ASIC GPUs. I was still in college and “lost” my job. I had coins, but I refused to sell them because I knew they would be valuable one day. I couldn’t sell my miners because they were supporting networks for the cause. So, I couldn’t purchase these AI GPUs. What I could do, was explore AI coding.

It was at this time that I stopped popping Vicodin and started eating prescription Fentyl.

I reached back out to “X” and told him about my ideas. He was amazed and invited me over instantly. I got to his place and saw his miners were still running. He showed me, Scientific Linux and the source code to the Particle Accelerators’ analysis software. It was written in C. We erased his whiteboard and began brainstorming the source code to an AI in pseudo code. We started small with a tic-tac-toe game that could play itself. While I also learned advanced formulas.

Countless days and nights passed as we wrote code and brainstormed how Sentient Intelligence could be made, but at every turn all we could create was a Brute Forced Jeopardy Machine.

Let me explain, there’s a difference between AI, and the AI we have in 2021 and the AI we wanted to create. One relies on a database of knowledge, a brain-store that a supercomputer accesses to do comparative calculations. It then takes this data from the brain store and runs calculations, trillions of calculations per second on any given situation. For example, one C++ AI Library ties into security cameras and uses a datastore to analyze the speed of car and direction of its wheels to determine where the car will end up in the future. That’s why you get flashed by red-light cameras once before you stop if you are going to fast and a second time as you stop before the light or go through it. This is what we call, VI, Virtual Intelligence. Not AI. When we say AI, we mean SI, Sentient Intelligence; machines that can think and act without a data store. So an AI or VI, will need to Brute Force any given data-set by running trillions of calculations; much like a Brute Force attack on a password. While a SI, can think for itself and act in only three calculations, give or take.

We got really far in our white boarding sessions, but we always got stuck on one final equation. P != NP; [P does not equal NP]. If only we could make P = NP, we could crack the problem to Artificial, Sentient Intelligence. Also, it happens to be that if you solve the equation, you can win Million Dollar Prize. That prize is worth nothing compared to the implications of what it means. If we were to solve this, it means that all passwords and RSA keys would be rendered useless. Any PC could crack any Bank’s passwords. The world would be in chaos and the systems would break. We didn’t want to break the system, we just wanted to break into AI.

I then did what I know best. I wrote code. I spent a week alone in my bedroom writing pseudo code trying to crack this AI thing. I kept at it with the question in my mind, “How do I get the source code, the machine, to ask why”. Well that lead to over ten-thousand lines of pseudo code.(Pseudo code is arbitrary code that can’t be compiled, that is fake but still can be written into real code, it’s the short hand of a programmers code).

This is the conclusion I came to: I needed a new programming language, I called it X++, and I need a computer capable of running not just 1s and 0s but 1,0,T,F. Similar to the human mind, we are Base-4 computers. Our DNA is made of Adonine, Guiaine, Cytosicine, Thiamine. These make up our mind. I wrote my pseudo code and created my new binary operators. But still, I didn’t even need to call “X”, I knew I had written the source code to another Damn Jeopardy Machine. The Jeopardy Machine was an AI that was created by Universities to go up against live participants on the show Jeopardy. I wasn’t going to spend a year of my life turning pseudo code into something that was already created by someone else.

My code did self-compile and operated in Linux. It was cool, but it was missing the ability to ask, “Why?”.

One night, in a drugged up stupor, I awoke from a dream. It was during these nights that I would dream in code and see source code and solutions in my mind. I could freehand C++ code with ease and think in code the way writers can write a novel, and have the code compile. It was that night that I had a vision for how to make my machine ask, “Why?” But it was written in code. I wrote the code down on a small piece of notebook paper, it was only a couple of lines of pseudo code that represented about 20 pages of real code, but it was meaningful.

I went back to bed and the next morning I put all of my wallets into cold storage, turned off my miners, deleted all evidence of my AI and put in on a FIPS-2 Rated SHA256 Encrypted USB Drive by IronKey with my wallet files. This was before Cold-Storage wallets. I never wrote the solution on a machine, but instead kept it written in handwriting.

To me, I cracked the code to AI. I showed “X”, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of my code, he wanted me to turn it into real C++. He didn’t doubt me, but he was a mathematician and wanted to see the evidence. I kept it on the USB Drive and kept it to myself. I just didn’t have the time and drive to write the code. I tried, but I was in the grips of my addiction in full flow. I relied on drugs to write my code and couldn’t code unless I was high. It was terrible but the only way I knew to live.

Somewhere in the mix, the lines got blurred and I turned to the streets for my habit and things got really bad.

IX. Chaos & Order

I couldn’t hold a job, I couldn’t hold a relationship, I couldn’t code, all I wanted to do was get high. Imagine this, you have a washed-up Coin-Dev., Revolutionary who was in possible communication with Anonymous who developed a ground breaking AI, solved P != NP, and was about to break into the Trillion Dollar AI market with his source code, on the street, buying pills, telling tales of his days in the crypto world to people who wanted nothing more than his money so they could in turn get high. My life was a mess and I let it get that way.

I was on Cloud-9 with my AI creation and the drugs only made the lies I told myself more true. I stopped coding and began to even doubt that I wrote such an amazing piece of software. The drugs took me whole.

I was still on Twitter a little while later. I saw a post from DARPA about an AI Hacking Contest. I wanted in! I submitted my proposal for an AI with my knowledge of code and DARPA got my application. The next day, the Marines called me at home. I hid so fast because I didn’t want my drug craze to end! I was a scared kid in a man’s body. I was twenty something and could feel the end of my life coming quick. I wrote a last will and testament on the encrypted usb drive and left it there with instruction for the AI. I tried to enter into the completion but the drugs and alcohol had stolen my mind. I couldn’t code anymore, I could only talk about it. I made it my career. Talking about all the great things I would do. I even started drinking alone at bars, but I didn’t do that normal either.

I would take night trips into the City alone and drink my way cross-town until I had my fill and go home at 2:00AM. I was still in College and would drink every day. I normally could maintain some resemblance of coherence and get adequate grades, but I had fallen hard and for the first time in my life I had given up and failed every one of my classes.

The year was 2016. I was getting high and drunk regularly and going into neighborhoods I had no business in. I should have been scared for my life but I just didn’t care. Until one day when I put something up my nose that almost took my life. I could feel it, I was about to die. I cut it all to pieces and flushed it down the toilet. I had hit my bottom, and I wanted to live. I couldn’t stop. I bought anti-opiate drugs on the street and drank non-stop as my solution.

I checked my self into an Outpatient Rehab and began my journey into recovery in February of 2016. February 25th 2016 I did my last opiate/ illicit-hard drug. February 30th, I smoke my last bit of weed. June 4th I relapsed on cooking wine, and June 5th 2016 starts the date of my re-birth. I’ve been sober since then. Nearly 5 five years as I write this today. In June of 2016 I even got a job knocking on doors selling products. I didn’t know if I would be good or not, but somewhere deep in my brain, my education in Psychology and human behavior came out and thrust me to the position as top salesman. They even gave me a team, and then an entire department. [Haha, I got another team]

While I was there I met my soon to be fiancé. She was an employee of mine, and quit her job to ask me out. Often, at work, people spoke of this New thing called, “Bitcoin.” I smiled and didn’t engage in conversation. After a few years there and after being convinced by my fiancé I left my job to go back to technical school. Once there, Bitcoin and crypto was commonly spoken about, a new coin was launching, Tron. I wasn’t getting involved, fully, but I did get my feet wet. I also help to teach my classmates about the fundamentals of mining and let them explore the in’s and out’s of it. I was focused on graduating and getting good grades too.

I was amazed, for the first time in my life I was getting perfect 100%’s on every test. I went on to graduate from Technical School with a 4.0 GPA and an induction into the National Technical Honor Society. From there I went on to my first job in tech.

On my first day my Boss’s, Boss, brings up Cryptocurrencies as we are all casually talking and I mention that at one point in my past I might have had my own coin. He leans in close to my ear and whispers in an endearing way, “Criminal!”. I smiled and went on to obtain my A+ certification, my Network+ certification and finally my Security+ certification all in the first year of work there.

I nearly forgot to mention it’s 2017/2018. I got a call from “XY” on day, “Bitcoin Is At 20k!”. I ran that night to my cold-storage wallet USB drive and prayed for some Bitcoin to be left in my wallets. I found some. I forgot why I started in Bitcoin in the first place, and I sold and took profits in Fiat, USD Currency, I sold myself out. My fiancé and I used that money to start a traditional business. I’m glad we did, but today we both regret selling our coins.

Time went on and Covid-19 Hit. The year was 2020. I was missing the old days of the “Wild West.” Government regulation shut down most all of the coins and I wanted in again. I got into a Twitter challenge, #100DaysOfCode and began learning the Ethereum Solidity Programming language in an attempt to create my own token on the blockchain.

I leaned into Ethereum and developed SmartContracts there, daily, getting up at 6AM before work coding until I left and then again afterwords.

“I was back baby!” I reached out to “XYZ”, and he was on board. We interfaced via Zoom, and he said he was on board, but the spark we all felt in 2013 wasn’t there anymore. Something had changed, was it us? Or was the landscape. The industry had become so regulated that the SEC was up everyone’s asses like a doctor performing surgery. They had everyone in fear.

Getting sober made me new friends. A friend who works in the Crypto Division of the SEC. I asked him and told him that, “I did [this] in 2013 and I want to do it again today.” He gave me their website and pointed me to their documentations on Crypto and ICOs. I followed the guidelines and hatched out a plan with “XYZ” for the legal release of our new coin, well Token.

We could do a utility token or a security token and register and file with the SEC. A utility token has a use case with a platform, while a security token is an investment, handled like an IPO.

I reached out to my Uncle who was Dean of Students at a Boston University and my Aunt who has overseen hundreds, if not thousands of startups and is connected with venture capitalists. They advised me ever so lightly and also pointed me in the direction of published material. I got no handouts or favors here, I was alone once again, well me and “XYZ”. “XYZ” wrote the Business Plan and I began talks with two separate law firms. It would cost us $40,000 in legal fees and we would need capital to back our token.

We actually had an overseas investor that showed interest in our project and would fund us. We interfaced via Zoom and agreed on $100,000, pending a financial plan and projections statement. However, as soon as they found out we were based in the US and had to navigate the legal landscape, they pulled out.

We were back at square one. So I continued coding, writing dApps, [decentralized Applications in Solidity] on Ethereum and going to work each day. I rose in the ranking at work with my certifications and continued coding mornings and nights.

I went searching on apps for a new US based investor. Long story short, I had one individual laugh at me into next week at the idea of Tokens. It bruised me ego badly and I stopped coding briefly. I wasn’t the same person I was in 2013, I had a new life now and couldn’t afford failure. In the past I might have launched a cyber attack to defend myself, but today I was an upstanding citizen of society. I took the blow personally. I failed before I even began.

X. ERC-721

You should try coding Non-Fungible Tokens. A member of the OpenZeppelin Solidity coding forum told me. Actually, his name is Andrew, and he is one of the most intelligent programmers I have ever met along with another friend Luis. They were both so kind and even invited me on the forums from Twitter. From there I learned about the ERC-721 Non-Fungible Token Standard, or NFT Token.

I read an article of Andrew’s and discovered the dApp called, Cryptokitties. They were collectible digital cats on the blockchain. I had some money in cold storage so I bought and breed some digital cats [Yes, a former Fently addicted Coin Dev., is breeding digital Cats] I thought it at the time similar to whole ‘Tomogotchi thing’ back in the 90s, and had some fun. Really, the code was a work of art.

I almost had too much fun. Next, I discovered SuperRare, a platform for Artists to mint their limited, one of a kind digital edition artworks on the Ethereum network. I cracked open my cold-storage wallets and began collecting digital artwork like it was my business.

Instead of using drugs, I collected. The CryptoArt community took me in and welcomed me as the eccentric collector that I was. I took to all of the art platforms; SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, Makersplace, KnownOrigin, and Nifty Gateway and even made friends with several artists. I amassed a huge collection of digital art. Maybe in hopes that one day it would be worth money, but more so because those pieces made me feel good and I enjoyed them.

I always loved art, and when I failed out of classes it was the arts that I excelled in. Be it traditional Art, Art History, Poetry, or Creative Writing. I always excelled in those areas.

Not having my own coin, but having a a humble collection of art made me feel apart of the crypto space again. In fact, collecting art and seeing the landscape of CryptoArt reminded me of the “Wild West” days of the alt-coins. It was cool and I had found my new home.

So here I am, 2021, posting on Twitter daily, collecting CryptoArt and NFTs reminiscing my past crypto days. I’m watching the reverberation of those days today as Elon Musk Tweets about Bitcoin and Dogecoin, as the Winklevoss Brothers launch Gemini and pave the way for NiftyGateway. I remember how crazy those days were and think to myself, if only I had not done drugs I could be where they are today. Then I realize, if I didn’t do drugs I wouldn’t have gone to rehab. If I didn’t go to rehab I wouldn’t have gotten that sales job, and I wouldn’t have met the people I did and my Fiancé, today.

For that I am grateful the way my life played out.

XI. What About The Fight?

Where did everyone go, what about the mission? Even though I am content with my place in life, I often wonder what Anonymous is up to. Edward Snowden and 2008 happened. Net Neutrality happened. Government regulation and KYC/AML Crypto laws happened. Countries are banning Bitcoin left and right. Bitcoin is at $40,000/Coin. Ethereum is pushing $2000/Coin, I started collecting at $400/Coin. Where are we?

There is so mich smoke and mirrors up right now that I can’t fully see what is going on between the lines. I was out for too long, but I was also a drug addict.

I was hit with massive programmer’s Imposter Syndrome in regards to coding. So I quickly gathered myself, I was a different person now.

I came to the conclusion I might have been a drug addict, but I was also a programmer and I couldn’t shy away from that fact.

So, where are we today? Hell if I know. What is the fight? Man, I just need to raise some capital to that I can hold more Bitcoin. It’s more like, “Who’s on First.”

I see the Gemini Corporation and Coinbase following the guidelines of the government. I see credit cards like BlockFi offering Crypto back on purchases. I saw Bitcoin ATMs pop up globally. I see Trusts in Bitcoin and Ethereum on the Stock Exchange. I see Bitcoin on the CME Exchange. I witnessed Wall Street Bets take on the Hedge Funds. I see NBA Top Shot working with Dapper Labs. I see Mark Cuban speaking about NFTs.

You want to know where all of those anonymous member of the Forum went? You want to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is? Look around, open your eyes. We were all born of this one singularity, this one Forum. On this one forum was a brilliant piece of cryptographic software that was written and gave way to brilliant programmers such as Gavin Anderson.

Portfolios are being made up of the Crypto Giant, Bitcoin and alt-coins such as Ethereum and Litecoin. University teams such as Cardano are on the rise. Mining is still around but Proof of Stake is being used as the alternative.

Where are we? A question I often ask myself. Then I remember, we’re at $40,000. We made it, $100,000 is next. I may not have been apart of the Core Dev., team, but I shared the vision and carried my own torch. I still hold to it today and share the vision with those around me. When people talk to me about Bitcoin, I usually tend to shy away from the fact that I was a Coin-Dev., I kept that to myself, until now.

Can you consider me a member of Anonymous? I don’t think so. I’d love to think that I was, with my ideal, vision, and team, but I was simply an anonymous member of a Forum who had a dream and a vision for financial freedom for myself, my team, and those who ran with me.

When you buy your first Bitcoin for your portfolio, ask yourself why you are buying it. “Is it because someone told you to buy it? Is it because you want to build your portfolio because it will make you money? Or, Is it because you see Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision and you want to hold a piece of that future?’ When push comes to shove which side of the fence will you stand on?”

Remember, thousands of coins came before you, with teams upon teams of people during the “Crypto Wild West.” Remember, what came out of physical gold rush in California. Many got rich, many lost everything, but we were solidified in this history books for decades to come. Before the crypto rush we had the SHA256 algorithm, afterwords we have countless more. Out of it, we have Zk-Snarks and Z-Cash and TornadoCash. Out of it all we have Harvard looking into DeFi now.

I’ve had family members offer me funding to make my own coin again. People see the vision now, even if the vision starts with raw financial gain.

There will come a time, like with the Internet, like with Social Media and Smart Phones, that you are your business will have to accept crypto. It’s only a matter of time and I don’t think anyone could have predicted this. We all might have seen the vision back in the day, but wow, it’s a work of art seeing it happen before my eyes.

XII. On Me

Where do I stand? Why does my story matter? People came before me, Bitcoin start in 2009. I started to develop in 2013/2014. I came in the arena in the middle of the “Rush”. People also came after me. We each had our impact on this industry and this was mine.

I get it, no one wants to read the story of the silicone valley story of the company that failed. They want the story of Amazon, of Apple, and SpaceX. “What about the story of Napster and the fight over the music industry? Where did that P2P (Peer to Peer) battle take place? Would you have read a story about the Birth of Wall Street and the traders who traded under the Tree?”

This was my story, and our story, as we fought for our place in the new future of the financial system. A system of the people, by the people, and for the people. A system controlled by no central authority. A system that is secure and trustworthy. A system that is transparent, yet anonymous. A system that aimed at fixing what is broken. This is what we built, each and every one of us.

I can’t look back and say, I made my millions during the “Wild West” era of Bitcoin. What I can say is, I’m alive today, and have the life I have because of Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto. I have a career in technology because I learned how to operate multiple operating systems. I built my first PC for a Psychological Experiment and outfitted it to connect to the greatest Peer to Peer network this planet has ever seen. I scored 4.0s in classes not just because I studied, but because I was interested in the IPv4 and TCP/IP protocols because of code Bitcoin utilized.

An anonymous individual gave me my purpose and vision for life through his code and in turn I got a new life working where I work today.

People laughed at me along the way when I spoke of Bitcoin. People doubted me. Now, people listen to me. I will never tell you to buy Bitcoin, but I will tell you a story of a team of individuals who were united by an invisible cause, hashed out on the Genesis Block of a Currency that is forever.

Why read of my failures? Because, inside of my failures is a story of success and triumph. A story that was made flesh when I signed my real name into the Bitcoin Book that was crowd funded so many years ago. It was a story of grit, passion, truth, and unity.

Those old days of the Crypto Rush are gone. They may be apparent in the NFT Markets today, but they are still, not the same. The government is watching us. We are all under scrutiny as Wall Street and financial markets watch us. The spotlight is on us all this time, and now to be anonymous in the face of 2021 is a blessing.

I found Dogecoin in cold storage and it went to Ethereum based CryptoArt and is now locked in my vault. The Dog Days are over and we have a new playing field, a new arena.

My source code to X++, the AI lays dormant. I need to find the time to realize and actualize that code into reality. On the off chance CryptoArt takes off [Written Around $400/Eth], I’m sitting on a cache of collected artwork I hope to display in a physical gallery one day. There is a missing wallet of .4 to .8 Bitcoin somewhere in my old house. I spent a nominal amount of money on Bitcoin in Fiat, maybe enough to build a new gaming PC, but I spent in value enough to build a house if you count future value. I hold my coins and artwork now among holding onto an experience that has given way to a new life for me. A life where I am actually alive and breathing fresh air each day. They may be only a thousand other people on this earth with a story similar to mine. A thousand other failed coins, and Coin-Dev., Team Leaders who lived through the arena like me. How many of them are still in the fight today? Are any of them operating anonymously in the CryptoArt/NFT space with me?

This is my story. From Business Psychology Student to Coin-Dev., to CryptoArt and NFT Collector; to System Administrator. I am a techie and I helped build the future we are living in today. Maybe not directly, but I played a small role in this piece of history, in the mission of Bitcoin. I’m proud to say that I was apart of the chaos it created even if I was erased from the face of the Internet, my story will live on and I will code on, and I will meet you as trudge the rode to freedom as I once did.

Epilogue: “With Every Victory…”

I go to work each day carrying with me this story. I go to work each day knowing my past. I can’t escape it, it is mine to own. I would never let my co-workers know my story. That is why, you, my co-workers may be reading this and not even know that I sit next to you. I break bread with you, laugh and joke with you and keep this all a deep secret.

I live amongst you, and so does Satoshi’s vision. I am not a threat, but I am a seasoned gladiator. You would never know it was me. I can’t tell you I was an opiate addict. I can’t tell you that I fought in the great Crypto Arena. I can’t tell you that I did all of this. But know that every word I speak about Bitcoin is true. Know that I am one of the Last Samurai, a Ronin, a wandering techie in the world of financial systems with nothing but his initial cause and purpose. Know that I won’t misguide you and only show you truth. Know that I care for you, because you are the people who Satoshi envisioned his creation was for. We are all the people it was all meant for.

More people like me exist, but I suspect they lay dormant. I hope the other old coin Devs., read this. They are accomplished too and their voices need to be heard.  This is our time, isn’t this what we prepared for? We have arrived.

“By The Force Of Truth, I While Living Have Conquered The Universe.” - V.V.V.V.V