Lessons learned and Grandma-friendly Crypto

A lot of people know me as #tinfoilken since I tend to believe in a lot of conspiracy "theories" like Bilderberg, Chemtrails (shout out to Erik Voorhees), perpetual War (shout out to Roger Ver), Gun Bans (shout out to Alex Jones), Internet Censorship (shout out to Jeff Berwick), Simulation Theory (shout out to Elon Musk) and of course all of the Energy and Finance cartels.

Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws.
Mayer Rothschild

I started coding professionally in 1991 (DOS, dBase, etc) towards the end of my enlistment in the US Navy. I learned a lot about various hardware and software systems back then, and of course a lot about war (Desert Storm). What a senseless waste. When I got my Honorable Discharge in 1993 I started up my first software company (Line9) and invented the world's first "shopping cart" and eBusiness software (Tek9 Pro). Amazon attacked me a couple years after that claiming that I had to cease and desist the sale of my Tek9 Pro eCommerce software, or pay them royalties because of their "one click checkout" schema. It's a good thing I document everything (thanx to the military I guess) because when you can show "proof of use in business" years before the "copyright cartels" come after you, they quickly move on to their next victim. At peak, I had about 37 people on staff and outsourced too. If you plan on starting a business, make SURE you learn how to hire/fire/manage decentralized teams of top people from around the world in different countries, and keep your overhead as low as possible. Just because you have built an awesome product does not mean that Marketing it will be successful. Even after the dotcom bubble burst, I managed to keep Line9 Corp. running until 2003 or so when we eventually ran out of money. Open source is great, and I still code open source software, but after awhile when enough people copy your software and have better marketing teams, well, you lose.

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I tried to do something about the Energy cartels by starting a little sustainable living business focused on solar energy. I built that company up pretty quick, invented the first portable solar powered generator and focused on getting it to everyone I could. It was expensive and not really as powerful as I would have liked, but hundreds of people loved it nonetheless. What I learned after a few years was that there are really only a couple of companies out there where you can even buy the components at a competitive wholesale price. I paid a company called Sunwize over $330K to get me the parts I needed and even when you do that it still does not ensure that you will get what you need in time from Germany and other solar product producing countries. Have you ever tried to ship a pallet of batteries over an ocean? I even paid my neighbor Jerry over $20K to use his alibaba skills to get me the parts, all to no avail. Running that business was not easy, and it eventually bankrupted me personally, but I learned a lot. Diversify your product line and always have backup vendors for the components that you'll need, from the beginning. Go wide. This was an awesome business though, I loved helping so many people get off of the grid and start providing for themselves.

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Next, I decided to take on the Gun Bans issue. If the government was going to start grabbing people's rights to self-defense, then I (as an activist) had to stand up to this and do something. When your loving government starts forcing you to buy permits for everything and can trample all over (and steal) a person's rights and property, you know that you are living in a police state. So, I went to school and learned all about guns, Simunitions, laws, self-defense and tactical. I became a Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor and hired numerous police officers to help me teach classes and get as many people their licenses as possible. With hundreds of 5-star reviews mounting on google, we quickly became one of the most popular gun schools in the nation, second only to the huge shooting range out in Arizona. Whoa momma, speaking of the range, if you don't have your own facility, then you need to buy or rent one, right? Well, the brand new multi-million dollar county indoor gun range was still virtually unused, so I figured hey man, I'm a taxpayer so I should have every right to use the range. Wrong. I was emailed every excuse in the book by the top cop why "his" range was unavailable, booked solid, not a good fit, and so on. I call BS. I emailed the top cop's attorney, acquired the real stats on the range via sunshine law (freedom of information) and it proved that every excuse that I was given was a lie. Earlier, I was given a tour of the range and was shown every inch of it, including the tactics area, gun maintenance room and even the offices.. all but one room. The armory. Hmm, why was I being kept from that room? Hmm, and what's with the little airstrip out back? Use your imagination. The new Marine Corps top cop that was running for office filled me in on the rest. So, I contacted the media. I organized a protest with my biker friends out front of the range called "Takin' it Back!". (they had to lock the gates that day to keep us out haha). I also found out that the top cop was best buddies with a couple of our competitors. Ok so long story short. He may be in the wrong, and violating multiple laws, but remember one thing.. He is the government. Standing up for your "rights" sometimes will get you into all kinds of hurt. The gov cannot "lose" as they will do whatever is necessary to hold on to their positions. They will smear you, harass and extort your customers, find ways of hurting your supporters, twist the law to say whatever suits them best, and even abuse your family to make you go away. So, the next time you think about protesting something, do it in a way that can just render the bad people obsolete. I am known for rattling cages because I can't stand to see all the hurt and injustice in the world and if we don't stand up to them somehow, then who will? So, to do that, I went back to Building..

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So, back in early 2015, I took all these lessons learned and started up BitShares Munich (shout out to Taulant at BitSapphire). I couldn't even afford to buy a new computer, but with my decades of experience in outsourcing I contacted some of my old crew and started coding up a mobile wallet for Bitshares. The Bitshares community seemed to like it (even though I was nowhere near happy with it yet) and they voted me in with their millions of BTS (Bitshares has an awesome decentralized governance model) so that I could get paid a few hundred bucks per month and improve the wallet. A very generous Investor loaned me a few thousand bucks more and I made some final improvements to that old wallet and started up a brand new (much faster) one with a much better UI/UX called the Smartcoins Wallet. Now that Bitshares has a couple of mobile wallets to choose from, hundreds of referrals started rolling in. How do we get crypto into the hands of the masses, I thought. I can't spend my Steem Dollars, BTS or Bitcoin in a store, so what needs to be built next? Well, let's enable all of the various Point Of Sale systems and cash registers out there to accept these cryptocurrencies, and many more, at zero cost. So, I invented the Smartcoins POS (later named to BlockPay). I found myself a handsome CEO/CFO, gave him 49% of my company and we got the ball rolling. He held a fundraiser, got the cash needed, sent out the OPENPOS tokens, and I just sat here in my dark bedroom architecting, leading, and slowly expanding my Dev teams and quickly released the first version of BlockPay on the google play app store. As a huge believer in open source since my very first days of coding, I know that the network effect of having the tools you need to rapidly build new programs is imperative, so my Devs also built the first Bitshares mobile app library called graphenej. Now anybody can build mobile apps for the platform. Hmm, what to build next.. People want the option of keeping their property absolutely private, right? Ok, since Bitshares' Stealth product was started (shout out to Dan Larimer) but not completely finished, I decided that that project needed to be tackled as well. If you are going to put your life savings onto a blockchain, then it better be damn secure, user friendly and absolutely private (unless you are required to reveal your assets of course). Now, I think this Internet Censorship issue I mentioned is getting pretty bad now, don't you? We need a better Internet, a truly decentralized Internet. Thanx to platforms like Steemit, Bitshares and soon Echo, we can decentralize our communications, and finances. But what about our data? Do you trust google, apple or microsoft with all your photos and private information? I don't. Actually, when I submitted the Bitshares Wallet to the Apple app store, they denied the app because it supported an "unsupported" cryptocurrency (BTS), and then they said that the Bitshares market cap was "not big enough", excuses excuses. I went around and around with Apple, appealing their denials for about a month. I have not the time or desire to try to convince a billion dollar corporation that the Bitshares blockchain is worth their while. Ok, their loss. So, expecting other app stores to start doing the same thing to our crypto products, I decided that decentralized app infrastructure will be my next big move. IPFS, baby! Go and Javascript are great, but not really suited for mobile in my opinion, so I knew that we need to code an implementation of IPFS in the C programming language. This would not only allow me to totally decentralize our app architectures, but we would no longer need to be "approved" by some centralized app store company. C-IPFS was born. Now, with our apps having a totally decentralized Core written in C, we can install our apps onto nearly anything. Imagine sitting on your couch watching the home shopping channel, you tap a button on your remote or phone to buy the item, a huge QR code is displayed on screen, you scan the code with your Smartcoins Wallet and approve the payment. Your TV makes a "ch-ching" sound and your new Roadhouse Barbie is on its way. Imagine paying with any crypto at a vending machine, or at the grocery store, the gas station, or even at the car charging station. Yes, all this and more is already in the works. I'll post another video in a few days that shows you some of the other stuff we're building, so please Follow, I think you'll like what you see..

Grandma-friendly Crypto, baby :)

Well, it's almost lunchtime already so I better get back to work, but I hope you enjoyed the read. The point here being, if you fail at something, it doesn't make you a failure, it makes you smarter. You will get better with every try. With every new thing that you try, you learn. Keep trying new things, keep building, keep planting seeds.

Much love and build towards world peace, daily.
.ken

keybase io / kenCode
kenCode at protonmail ch