All in the span of a week I've gone from Steem Agnostic, to a Steem Believer, made a lot of Steem, lost a lot of Steem (thanks @berniesanders) and have ignited the Steemosphere with controversy.

A lot of people have questions, doubts or concerns about my intentions here and so I want to make those clear in this post.

And, since a lot of the shrapnel that has been thrown my way has been because my intro post "wasn't very good", let me correct that now.

And, for the record, the reason my intro post "wasn't very good" was because I had NO idea that I would receive such a response.  For all I knew, I was going to make a quick post on this "new website" and not hear another word about it and then move on.

I obviously thought wrong!

ALLOW ME TO RE-INTRODUCE MYSELF, MY NAME IS...

(Thanks to @stellabelle for the free make-over, she does them on Steemit and as you can see she is really good)

Jeff Berwick.

Born in Canada, hated the government indoctrination camps (school), never went, did a deal with my Mom and the Principle to just go for the tests.  Would read the textbook the night before or morning of, and write as much of the useless dates and information as I could on my arms and legs to get 50% to pass.

The rest of the time, since 12 years old in 1982, I was on my Apple II+ clone computer called a Unitron that I had to build myself with a soldering iron because we were too poor to afford the real deal.

Aside from a short rap career, I muddled along in various odd jobs until I heard about the internet in 1993.  I was working at a bank at the time as an investment advisor and I started a website called Stockhouse.com because I was interested in the stock market.

I began to write about stocks on the site in 1995 and the site grew dramatically.  It got to the point where if I wrote about a penny stock it would rise 50%+ the next day because everyone wanted to buy it.  I still had no money though and so I did a deal with my bank manager to let me work 95% of the time on my website in exchange for stock tips.

Eventually the site grew even bigger and was already the top financial website in Canada in 1996 and I decided to quit my job to the shock of everyone I knew.  "How could you quit your good job at a bank to try to do something on this new thing called the internet?" they decried.  "The internet will never catch on," they said.

I went into $200,000 of credit card debt to build the company, at one point making my bank manager (who I used to work for) think I had a drug problem.

But, by the year 2000, it was in eight countries around the world, had 250 staff, had raised more than $40 million in financing and was valued at $240 million.

By the end of 2001, it was nearly worthless and bankrupt after the tech bubble collapsed.

My partner tried to commit suicide and I scrambled for a year trying to save it and finally did and then sold it for pennies (compared to $240 million), exhausted, in 2003.  Stockhouse.com, 20 years later, still remains the most trafficked financial website in Canada.

I then tried sailing around the world, with zero sailing experience (I left the day I bought the boat and nearly sank it three times the first night).  I eventually sank it in El Salvador, ironically, because by then I was actually a good sailor just caught in a bad circumstance.

After going to nearly 100 countries, having made a movie in China with Jackie Chan, lived in Thailand and read everything I could on Austrian economics and the philosophy of liberty and anarchism I decided to move to Mexico to "settle down for a while" (many of my adventures are recorded in my personal blog at berwick.com).

I met my wife there and ended up adopting a 3 year old girl and then incorporating her 6 year old son into our new little family which also includes five dogs.

In 2010 I started The Dollar Vigilante, which has since become the fastest growing financial newsletter in the world and the only newsletter of our size with regular coverage of cryptocurrencies.

I found out about bitcoin in 2011 and have been one of its biggest promoters ever since, having been one of the first people on CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg and many others talking about bitcoin as far back as 2013.

Everyone called me crazy then too.  They said bitcoin was a scam or a ponzi scheme... or would never catch on.  Sound familiar?

In 2011 I began a podcast which has become the largest anarcho-capitalist podcast in the world, Anarchast.  It has over 3 million views on Youtube and we are just about to hit our 300th episode this week.  It is also broadcast on dozens of radio stations in the US and across the world via the Liberty Radio Network.

In 2015 I launched the world's first and largest anarcho-capitalist conference, Anarchapulco.  It has doubled in size every year and could exceed 1,000 attendees in 2017.

And then, on August 4th of this year (my first week anniversary!) I discovered Steem and Steemit!

Since then I have appeared for nearly two hours straight on national radio in the US talking about Steemit, interviewed the founders of Steem, @dan and @ned for Anarchast (over 30,000 views to date on FB and YT) and have worked my entire network of friends to bring in big name people in the liberty sphere onto Steemit.

Here are just a few who I have brought in:

• Barry Cooper of the Never Get Busted Crew @barrycooper
• Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change @lukewearechange
• James Corbett of the Corbett Report @corbettreport
• Dan Dicks of Press For Truth @pressfortruth
• Rick Falkvinge of the Pirate Party @falkvinge
• Larken Rose, famous anarchist and author of The Most Dangerous Superstition @larkenrose

And many, many more (btw all of those people are past and future speakers at Anarchapulco).  Through just those alone, according to this post, Steemit has been exposed to 500,000+ people.

And I am working on many more even bigger names.  I'm currently trying to convince a friend named Milo, amongst others.

In other words, in my first week, I have been responsible for exposure of Steemit to well over half a million people... and I am just getting started.

My goal is to bring in one million new users to Steemit by the end of the year.  And, I fully expect if we can keep this thing together that Facebook and other social media sites will have to change their business model or buyout Steemit (good luck) within 2 years.  Why?  Because I think Steemit could change EVERYTHING in the social media world.  I've been through the advent of the internet and the advent of bitcoin and was called crazy at the time for saying I think they would change everything.  I put my money and my mouth behind them both.

And I am doing that with Steem.  Since arriving I cashed out 3 bitcoin worth of Steem just to make sure it worked.  I have since transferred it back in and have powered up every Steem dollar I have earned on the platform and intend to do so for the foreseeable future.

Stay tuned and follow me here on Steemit as I have a lot more in the works.  I am interviewing @larkenrose and @dragonanarchist on Anarchast early next week to talk Steemit and also doing a debate with Tone Vays, who thinks Steemit is a scam or ponzi scheme.

If you look at Facebook or Youtube when I have talked about Steemit you'll see dozens of people calling me crazy, saying I am a scammer and Steemit is a scam or worse.  I'm taking a beating out there in the world outside of Steemit for my passion for the platform.

But I'm used to it, I did the same with the internet and bitcoin in their earliest days.  And even still to this day some people say I'm an idiot for being so passionate about bitcoin.

There's always going to be haters.  I even have haters here on Steemit of all places!

None of it will stop me.  I'm on board the Steem train and it has just left the station!  Who's with me?