About Me (DRAFT)
Decentralization: the transfer of authority from central to local government.
“What specific trigger caused you to start accumulating bitcoin” — Pierre Rochard
For me, it was not a trigger or single event, it was a long lived journey of learning from my past mistakes, present enlightenment, and future speculation; It goes something like this:
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” — Albert Einstein
It all begins with high school… well sort of.
“Hacking generally refers to unauthorized intrusion into a computer or a network. The person engaged in hacking activities is known as a hacker. This hacker may alter system or security features to accomplish a goal that differs from the original purpose of the system.
Hacking can also refer to non-malicious activities, usually involving unusual or improvised alterations to equipment or processes.” — https://www.techopedia.com/definition/26361/hacking
Collège Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau
Enrolling in Grade 10 computer class was at first quite a shock for me. After already self-learning a variety of skills at home; I acknowledged how far advanced I was in the classroom as it became apparent, I knew more than Mr. Allard and the rest of the class was utterly lost in his lectures. I would walk around hearing, “Justin, can you show me, help me, or do this for me” the entire time, and wouldn’t get my assignments done until after school, sometimes I already had them finished within a few hours as the rest of the class had days allocated for the same task. I took over his teaching position in exchange for credits, and asked for all remaining entire curriculum assignments. I then completed them all at home on that very weekend.
Lawn care — walking into business
Anyone can start a lawn care business, get equipment and a truck, the grass always grows if it rains!
I learned from my aunt and uncle that in business and especially lawn care, one of most difficult things is not the pursuit of getting new customers — It’s keeping old ones happy. I had some of the same clients for over 10 years, as they refused to get anyone else to cut their lawn, so I had to continue; Even when there came a time when, financially — I was wasting my time and sometimes taking a loss. After developing a strong bond with my customers, I simply could not let them down. I had no issues letting myself down in terms of monetary success as a business but as a human, I still made a profit. I kept a handful of customers from my aunt and uncle’s business that gave me my first source of income when in my early teens. As of writing this today, I still have one of those customers and maintain her yard weekly. The other remaining one recently passed away, two years ago my largest client retired and ambitiously does it himself.
Hacking stuff together
I did not live a normal childhood. Almost every electronic toy I received was later taken apart and butchered for transplant-able pieces. I had ideas and needed gadgets, but only for salvage purposes.
I began taking books out of the library, making my own jot notes in binders like I was back in school, even though that’s how I spent most of my weekends and holidays.
I would tinker and build electronic circuits, design and manufacture PCB boards, theorize about what electricity, quantum physics magnetism is along with; I would play around in PIC Simulator, writing source code in a BASIC language, then with a magic press of a button translating it to Assembly and then HEX, later transferring it to a 16F84 chip just to blink an LED, turning on a servo, or displaying text on a recycled LCD display. This was a party for me.
Yahoo! Geocities websites
This is when I first got a taste at web-design. Using the Geocities WYSIWYG editor I made my first web-page and was hooked. Instantly I knew I needed to learn HTML and code websites from scratch, the world will eventually need websites and I should learn early how to do it.
mIRC and Yahoo/MSN Groups
Social networking back in the day was done through Yahoo and MSN groups, for the advanced computer users a neat little program called mIRC was available, you could connect to hundreds of public servers and interact with people in real-time, share files and even modify the application and create plugins or scripts to automate chat features. I spent most of my time online as a teenager using this application, learning as much as I could from mentors, downloading and sharing e-books, games and software. It was a bit confusing at first but eventually was a door to the rest of the world, I had lots of friends who I could ask for programming advice and help. Often I shared my projects and source code with them too.
Hacker Manifesto
One of the most influential files I ever found online was the Hacker Manifesto, written in 1986 by an anonymous hacker.
“This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.”
Ripostle (2000–2001)
True P2P Anonymous file sharing program does not require central servers
or even an internet connection!
After the demise of Napster; Regular internet users struggled to find sources to download mp3s and other digital files.
Although I agree, that you should not steal or pirate music, I was also smart enough to see the fundamental change in society before it occurred; People wanted to download music off the internet, and some of them would pay too!
With very little experience in software development; I began to teach myself Visual Basic 6 from my past experience of using QBASIC in DOS, reading several tutorials, and examples from planet-source-code. I created the one of the first P2P protocols that did not require a central server like Napster did to operate.
It was fully decentralized, connecting and sharing a list of peers, querying their shared files and compiling a searchable local database. I never fully released this, as I knew legal implications would probably get me in a lot of trouble; Considering there would have been no way to shut it down!
It was buggy and needed a lot of work too, I was still completing high-school and was only working on this in my spare time. Eventually, a commercial grade replacement called eMule was launched by other developers and gained popularity quickly. I abandoned working on Ripostle and shared the source with a few friends.
http://github.com/BiznatchEnterprises/Ripostle
Companionbar (2001)
My first programming client came to me by accident. I was always researching ways to make money online while I was taking a break from learning, I ended up finding a website that paid you to view advertisements by running a small application that you ran on your windows desktop. “Get paid to surf the web!” The payouts where not very big at all, but my curiosity and programming skills helped me identify a weakness in the software.
I built a small VB6 program that automated interacting with the companion bar software to remain in active state, thus earning money while I was not even at my computer, or even sleeping! I knew I could make a lot of money by cheating the payout system, but I also remembered the difference between a black and white hat hacker; I wanted to be remembered as the hacker that helped and not destroyed CompanionBar. I chose to contact the CEO — James Ventrillo; who also owned BuildReferrals.com. I let him know about my successful exploitation; He was shocked, and grateful as I also suggested a method to prevent cheaters: Make them perform a “human active check” by forcing them to click a number or button of a certain color. At that time, to my knowledge; No other website or software used a similar security system known today as a Turing Test, CAPTCHA — Verify you’re human.
e-gold (2002)
I found out about this amazing payment service from James, he introduced me to some friends of his, one went by the AOL and IRC nickname: GrayFox, who later introduced me to others.
I think what impressed me the most early on; Was when e-gold designed and implemented their own Turing Test in their account signup and access software Jan 8, 2002. This was a huge step towards security in my opinion, I trusted their development team was capable of keeping customer funds safe from people like me, hehe.
My new internet friends would gather in MSN/Yahoo groups and discover various ways to earn tiny bits of e-gold for clicking ads or playing simple gambling games. We’re all too young at this point to truly understand the political and economic importance of this internet piggy bank that appears to pay out in real gold bars. In the early days very few merchants and services accepted this radical concept for digital money. Paypal was just beginning to market themselves as a stable payment processor for global clients, e-gold was focused on privacy, accessibility, liberal and neutral policies.
Unregulated gambling began to grow as new internet users got deactivated from Paypal for MLM, pyramid and ponzi schemes, along with various other criminal behavior— they migrated to e-gold. Struggling to enforce account due diligence and eventually AML compliance, e-gold became a standard means of payment on the World Wide Web. This truly inspirational service forever changed e-commerce, and taught a new generation of economics, by setting new legislation for e-currency providers and internet child pornography in the mid 2000s.
HYIP gambling (2001–2002)
Researching the underground internet world of e-gold merchants and users, I quickly found High Yield Investment Programs. These operated exempt from securities laws, available to accredited investors only. You needed to have sufficient capital, as well as understand the technical requirements to using an e-gold account, and how ponzi and pyramid schemes work. This was quite a shocking industry as I quickly learned you can lose a lot of money very quickly, or earn more than you imagined overnight. Understanding these are high risk unregulated gambling, I experimented on a few with assistance from a few friends, later earning a decent return. Sharing our gains with everyone, we knew this was not sustainable and decided to move onto other ways of making money online.
Affiliate Marketing and Paid to Click/View/Join (2002–2003)
MLM, Affiliates and PTC industry began to take off. Thousands of people are turning to their computers and the internet in hopes of making real money online. Hundreds of services began using e-gold and later; Liberty Reserve, Gold-Money, Paypal and others to process millions of dollars in internet revenue.
I was learning and experimenting as much as possible. Trying to build a down-line network of referrals and collecting honest legitimate paying services to share frequently with others. This was at the start of the .com boom.
Domain name values skyrocketed, search engine optimization became a huge part of online marketing and everywhere you looked was an advertisement about making money while you surfed the web.
EZE-Database (2002)
Realizing I needed a real product to maintain a business, and potentially my own affiliate network; I decided to start working on something I knew was useful. A secure database written in PHP. Remembering my past experiences in the HYIP industry dealing with SQL data breaches, and insecure ASP.net scripts, I decided to use what I learned to develop more of a “use-it-out-of-the-box” type product. Drop and go, secure database for any PHP web-project was what I envisioned. After version 1 was functional it was then used as a plugin for every major software application I developed afterwords for over 10 years.
EZE-Cores (2001–2003)
Early in my PHP programming days, as I was teaching myself the syntax mostly using the official documentation because very little tutorials or guide where available online.
I noticed the lack of a basic framework for application development. It was very different than VB; GUI and core process source code was mixed together, a jumbled mess. It was like using QBASIC, but for the internet.
Loading up an Apache server on my windows machine; Over the course of several years, I developed an advanced application framework of my own design. It attempted to organize the source code and allow for reuse in a plugin style method. At the time, there was no such thing as content management systems like Wordpress, Joomla, etc. Every application was developed from scratch, in a very time consuming process. To increase development efficiency I seen the potential with EZE-Cores to create websites in record breaking time without having to write similar code again and again.
EZE-CMS (2002)
Bringing together EZE-Database, with a solid foundation using EZE-Cores, I developed one of the world’s first primitive content management systems.
Users with very little technical knowledge could make changes to their website in real-time.
This was a huge selling feature for large corporate clients; They wanted websites, but did not like the static nature or having to revamp it every few years and pay large sums to make changes as their business and portfolios evolved. Changing entire page layouts with a few simple clicks, adding and removing pictures or text by customers appeared like magic; In reality; They’re simple database driven snippets of code, dynamically generating web-templates as they’re requested by visitors.
This became the standard foundation for all of my website client projects. I had no use for SQL, Wordpress or any other crap out there, mine was solid as a rock and very quick to execute.
4616198 MB Ltd. operating as Biznatch Enterprises (2002)
Knowing that I had potential to “make it in business”, I started to inquire about freelance work from some of my internet contacts from previous years.
Incorporation was my first step, I was pressured from my parents to go to post-secondary education, but I was rebellious and remembered my days in high school when I was teaching people basic computer skills… I wanted nothing to do with a formal education. Naturally, I thought, I will sink or swim in business and whatever I learn, at least I did not pay a teacher to tell me, I figured it out by myself through the school of “hard-knocks”.
Bituminex (2003–2015)
I was fortunate enough to acquire my first large local client with the help of my father. He was a mechanic and shop manager for C.P.B, a collection of construction companies, one of them Bituminex — Asphalt paving. They were the largest in Manitoba… I put together a simple website to replace their old one and it was online for 6 years until; With the assistance of a graphic designer just graduating school, we used EZE-CMS along with a modern layout design that went online in early 2009 and was active 2015.
You Dont Belong (2005)
The problem with most anti-virus programs today is that they mostly target only known viruses.
“They simply scan you computer for “infected” files that are on their virus definition list. The accuracy of catching all problem causing pests running on your computer using this method is very very insufficient. We here at Biznatch know that having full control over what should BE and what SHOULD NOT BE on your computer can eliminate unwanted Spyware/viruses/programs with ease and with a maximal success rate. You Dont Belong Does does not try to target Pests, It alerts you when files on your computer attempt to pester you or prohibit comfortable usage of your computer . We are engagingly creating a huge user-built database of verified Safe and Unsafe Programs that will be automatically accepted and rejected by your system. This Pest Defense Suite Allows for the beginner or novice computer user to take control over Pests and unwanted trash inhibiting maximum performance of their system. Our Suite is packed with professional utilities used by the pros who deal with havoc created by viruses every day. Taking Control in the battle against viruses and problem causing programs is the first step to eliminating their creation and infection. You Dont Belong uses ePPN Technology to Finger Print and Identify each and every file and program that attempts to execute, modify your windows system, or be on your computer without your permission. Genuine Validated Safe and Unsafe Program Verification Lists allow for ease of user due diligence when encountering suspected pests. Don’t Take Chances over who controls your computer, Take Control YOURSELF Today!”
http://web.archive.org/web/20050211224530/http://www.biznaturally.org
BizNet (2004)
Code-named “The Safeway Project” was an idea suggested to me by a friend from high school. His part time job, was stocking the shelves and changing the price tags at… You guess it: Safeway.
He was one of Mr. Allard’s students in computer class and was well aware that I might be able to build a digital solution to make his job less cumbersome.
Taking into consideration the P2P network I designed for Ripostle, I based the same concept but for LCD modules connected using CAT5 cable but a running a custom data transmission protocol. With the help of my older cousin Trevor and a few friends, we salvaged LCD screens from old bar-code readers purchased at the local surplus store, Princess Auto.
We then custom designed and etched our own PCB circuit boards in a makeshift laboratory setup in my parents basement. Our goal was to have a mainframe computer connected to each LCD module, tied into the existing PoS database and inventory system.
We built a working prototype and then our worst nightmare: We discovered that someone (maliciously or not) registered a patent for an almost identical concept just three months prior. Humbled, we abandoned this project but took our skills that we acquired and focused on web-design for existing local businesses.
Learning the hard truth about patents, going to open source, copy-left (2004)
In theory we could have went through costly legal battles and somehow managed to market the Safeway Project, but I had already done some research into various licenses, patent processes, etc and discovered that patenting an idea only get you so far, and it can be very costly. If we had investors, and did not fund the project ourselves then we would have explored this method first before attempting to build it. Once it’s built and marketed you still need to pay to protect it, and that is only valid for a short period of time.
Taking into consideration the Free Software movement (GPL), GNU, MIT, Creative Commons, Copyleft, BSD and others, we discovered that you could still protect an idea or concept for as long as 99 years, for free. It would be public knowledge and then nobody could patent it, so legal battles would be minimal and almost guaranteed successful. I am not greedy, I want to share my ideas, not hoard them so nobody else can have them unless they pay me.
EZI-Skript Builder System (2004)
Development on EZE-Cores and EZE-Database continued as I worked on other projects. The scale of the application was enormous compared to anything I created in the past.
I was building my own web-development IDE from scratch in VB6. Utilizing this software; I was able to manage many different source files all on one screen, template new modules and plugins using GUI forms and even encrypt/decrypt the source code so anyone else wanting to edit the software application needed to use the EZI-Skript Builder System with the correct password key. These security features became essential when Biznatch Enterprises took on our most challenging client to date.
Renaissance Consulting OptimizeYourMoney (2004)
I was approached by a local Financial Advisor wanting a web-designer. He needed someone to take over development of his mortgage and debt based platform, I decided to take over the project from another development team.
With the help of a few close friends, he quickly showed me reasons to be suspicious. Noticing him taking in tens of thousands of dollars from investors, then claiming he had no money to pay for development costs, while stringing lie after lie, manipulation tactic after mind game… Half way into the project I decided I had enough. I could clearly see he was using me to create his patent-able software application, and was going to screw me over in the end. Using the EZI-Skript System: I encrypted all the source code required to run the software, the core mathematics and everything, included was a time-sensitive locking mechanism that would automatically re-encrypt the source code with a random key if I was unable to “check” in and manage it. This would render all copies of the entire application and permanently lost.
He was ruthless, harassing friends, pressuring them to turn against me; I decided to act quickly to teach him a lesson he would never forget. He picked the wrong kid to mess with. Sure I was in my early 20s, just starting out in business, but I knew a Ponzi scheme when I seen one, he was using investors funds for personal gain! I was not going to be a pawn, not Biznatch!
I went to my lawyer and had him write a formal license agreement, under strict conditions; for a lump sum of money I knew he collected from investors — but squandered it away for himself. By a certain date he needed to pay or he doesn’t have a web-software platform worth patenting.
I knew technically I had him on his knees, there was no way he could break the encryption or guess the password, there was no way he could learn coding fast enough or bypass by reverse engineering my amateur coding mess — even if it was functional and stable, oh but he tried. He had contacts from his experience from his time at the Royal Military College of Canada, coders, hackers and whatever… They all tried to bypass my security but failed.
Carefully written in the license agreement was specific clauses to ensure, I wasn’t going anywhere, and If his plan to dump me from the project was true; I would take everything I worked on with me.
Commencing the first full month following delivery of the Web-Script, Renaissance Shall pay Percy on the 1st day of each month a monthly license fee in the amount of $15.00 for as long as Renaissance continues to use the Product. In the event that Renaissance Should fail or refuse to pay said monthly license fee in any one or more months, the license by Percy to Renaissance herein shall immediately cease and Renaissance shall have no further rights to the Product or to use thereof, and all such rights shall thereupon revert to Percy.
It is understood and acknowledged by Renaissance that Percy shall retain exclusive knowledge and possession of encryption codes necessary to access the product and to permit the product to function. Upon any breach of the terms of this Agreement, or upon failure by Renaissance to pay the monthly license fee, Percy shall have the right to inactivate the Product and to remove the Product from Renaissance’s premises and possession. Renaissance herby specifically consents that Percy may in its sole absolute discretion enter on to Renaissance’s premises and access its computer system in order to exercise these remedies.
Manitoba Securities Commission (2005)
This was some of the most challenging few years of my life. After a failed web-design contract, investing into development of an already patented technology and losing my savings (the little bit I had), I then got a call from the Manitoba Securities Commission investigation team.
They wanted to know every bit of information I had on Renaissance Consulting, and how implicated I was in his business dealings. I knew this was the final phase in which I initiated with my license agreement, the investors are seeking class action lawsuits against everyone involved in that project. I was a prime suspect as the entire collapse was obviously blamed on me.
Disclosure of emails, false promises, shady investor dealings and of course the mismanagement, and abuse I endured while working on the project was enough to fully clear me of any criminal involvement in the case. All investors/contractors got a minimal compensation, I refused what was offered. Mr. Spence ended up losing his financial advisory license, life savings and all possessions and was unable to continue ripping people off for his personal profit. Satisfied, I did the right thing, I was broke and struggling with my friendships and with my parents, but I won!
GomezPeerZone (2005)
Searching for something to make money, I was finally approved to join the GomezPeerNetwork. The payouts where nothing to get excited about, but the technology was interesting to me. This little program was distributing “work” to peers like me, and then rewarding them for their idle cpu time. The task they performed was to check the online status of their client’s websites. This was later known as “up-time” monitoring, GPZ was one of the only true P2P decentralized computing protocols at the time. Everyone of my computers had this running 24/7 and I earned enough to pay for some domains and hosting, but that was about it. My brain began to ponder though.
Baghead is born (2005)
I am not sure what clip-art site I “stole” this image from, if you own the copyright please don’t sue me, I will negotiate a deal, hehe.
When I found this image I really did not care about getting sued, or much of anything to be honest. It became my profile picture, an inside joke to me: “hide my face” while I was busy researching conspiracy related material that began to surface on IRC. People questioning the official story of 9/11 and how the twin towers appeared like a controlled demolition, JFK, Nikola Tesla, aliens, perpetual motion, NWO, economics of the war on terror, secrets of the federal reserve, Peak Oil and others.
I attempted to archive what I could, as a few friends helped me decipher bullshit from truth; I collected information from various sources. I started to share the same information I found, and established a FUCKBUSH website.
Mr. Green.biz (2005)
During my course of research, I became obsessed with alternative energy, peak oil, climate change and global warming. The science was clear, the politics were cloudy. I was urgently trying to spread the truth as I knew the oil companies would silence anyone who tried to affect their profit margins.
I discovered hundreds of scientists and inventors brutally murdered, silenced or tormented for their efforts to bring clean, renewable sources of energy dating all the way back to the 1900s. How could this happen? I thought. Do the governments really do whatever the large corporations tell them to do? Yes it was clear, as most of the people around me simply thought electric cars, self-powered houses and energy bills vanishing was all quak-talk.
Years, later what once was underground theories became mainstream consensus among politicians and economists, humans are indeed affecting the climate and will suffer monetary losses and devastating consequences to the environment if we don’t wake up and change our ways.
Biznatch is Open Source (2005)
I was on a rampage, nobody will buy my software, so I will release it as freeware maybe a large corporation will give me a job… I released some of my completed projects in the past, directly on biznaturally.ca and .org in an attempt to get attention from an internet browsers wanting some VB6 code to play with. Maybe I would find a new friend, I wasn’t sure… What I was sure of; Nobody would pay for the applications, thinking I was just an amateur coder.
e-gold Downfall (2007)
“The government claimed that e-gold facilitated child pornography and identity theft by allowing criminals to pay for illegal images and launder other funds gained through credit card fraud and other crimes.”
This was one of the most difficult days of my life. Not that I lost any money held within e-gold, nor was I implicated in any of the investigations; This website and all of its other merchant services, taught me more about economics and technology than any university could do in the same time frame. I made countless friendships, and discovered my own inner strengths I never imagined to find. I was truly saddened that the owner was used a scapegoat for the crimes committed on his service. Slightly outraged, I vaguely remember contacting him through email directly to Dr. Douglas Jackson, commending his life’s work and the positive things they brought to humanity.
BitTorrent Network (2007)
This was an incredible new protocol launched at the most opportune time. Although a lot of pirated material is distributed on it, this network is also used by large enterprises or software corporations. The unique design splits files into packets and then downloads them in whatever order they’re most available.
To ensure that all the downloaded files match their shared copy on the network, an MD5 signature is created from the file contents and compared once the download has completed. This ensures with 100% accuracy, the integrity of the network remains constant, even if the connections and peers are not.
I had not considered this approach for Ripostle, but quickly understood how essential it was; Files distributed on a decentralized network protocol need to have fail-safe transfer protocol that ensure nothing is corrupted. Not all files are complete on all nodes at all times, and making use of partially downloaded content increases the reliability for downloads.
Hashing with MD5 (2006–2007)
My first introduction to MD5; Was when I was building YouDontBelong pest patrol suite. Implemented to ensure any user-identified files that are known malware; Can be tagged and later distributed to other anti-virus peers and secure them automatically.
The tutorials and diagrams I found, clearly showed that whatever input was sent into the function, would result in the same or different digest output; But of always the same length in characters or bytes.
Remembering my vague introduction tutorials, as I was able to grasp how to use a hash function in programming without any difficulties, I still did not quite fully understand why it was so useful for other tasks I never imagined possible before.
As I began to learn Ubuntu Linux 8, then upon downloading the ISO image, I was reminded to check the hash to ensure it was complete. To me; I thought this MD5 thing appears to be standard security among programmers, so I will keep using it, looks kinda neat too.
There it was again, comparing files and obviously comparing two string like passwords was easy too. I was storing all user passwords in my EZE-Databases, using the MD5 function to ensure if anyone got root access; could not decipher the plain-text passwords, until it was broken at least.
Building the Hash Tree (2006–2008)
Struggling again with financial issues; I was randomly thinking one late night about e-gold. I truly missed the business opportunities it presented, so much fun.. gone forever.
But why? I thought, was it because of the child porn and criminal activities or was something more at play, was it because of the gold?
I was feeling nostalgic so I decided to google “e-gold spend form”, just to see if I could find a glimpse of what I would consider started my long journey of constant learning about economics and politics. I then noticed “Your batch for confirmation is: ….” Wait a minute I thought, that looks like a hash digest but without the letters, did they forget to use MD5? Probably not, I snickered.
After several weeks of doing other projects, trying to pay bills and make a living; I kept thinking about this concept building in my brain… If gold bars have serial numbers, held in secure vaults, audited by third-parties to verify the gold is pure and of weight inscribed; Would that be similar to an MD5 function comparing two passwords or files? Is that the auditing process in terms of programming… Maybe. But what about the gold? Dr. Douglas Jackson already tried that before, what about just replacing the gold purity and weight with an MD5 of certain relevance to the transaction? Would that be considered something of unique value?
I began to scribble down some jot notes in Photoshop, remembering my BizNet, I used a token to symbolize a multi-dimensional data packet, I thought to use that as a transaction value, plus or minus on the balance and then Hashing other relevant information from the e-gold spend form to create a Batch Hash. This was not complete. Based on my experience of dealing with multi-file EZE-Databases; I knew something would need to “tie” each transaction together so they could be assembled in sequence in memory even if not in sequence on the hard drive. If the token was altered by one or more nodes; The digest output was different and would be rejected, this formed the Transaction Hash.
Hash Trees or known as “tries”, were first developed by Fredkin [1960] recently implemented elegantly by Bentley and Sedgewick [1997] as the Ternary Search Trees(TST), and by Nilsson and Tikkanen [1998] as Level Path Compressed(LPC) tries. The concept of hash trees is named after Ralph Merkle who patented it in 1979.
“In cryptography and computer science, a hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every leaf node is labelled with the hash of a data block, and every non-leaf node is labelled with the cryptographic hash of the labels of its child nodes. Hash trees allow efficient and secure verification of the contents of large data structures. Hash trees are a generalization of hash lists and hash chains. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree
Knowing I had an insane amount of work ahead of me, I decided to build the concept in my head. I only knew BASIC programming/HTML and was just starting to learn Linux and PHP. There was no way I could technically pull this thing off and make it presentable to intelligent people — I thought. It was seriously going to be mix of stuff I programmed up until this point, Ripostle EZE-Database, YouDontBelong… but I still had major issues to overcome first. What about security, is this creating coins out of thin air? Would people even want this thing after they’ve become obsessed with gold in the physical format, or a digital representation? I honestly thought, probably not. I still need to eat and pay bills, but this idea won’t die… Even if I did.
Someone, somewhere out there must be able to put this thing together and fix issues I only began to envision. I did what most conventional open-source coders would never do, I released it through friends from back on mIRC, GrayFox was one. Copyright was simply to be trusted to their integrity, there was nothing in the public directly connecting me to this project, I did not even know the name, until I found Bitcoin several years later.
Profit Hunters Club (2007)
Fascinated with e-gold, again. I was searching every possible thing I could find on gold/silver, economics and politics. I decided to start Profit Hunters Club as a forum to discuss with others similar concepts Dr. Douglas Jackson was attempting to explain in his e-gold blog posts while awaiting trial.
I began to dig deeper into the roots of our monetary system, to my utter shock I shortly discovered that the dollars we trust for exchanging goods and services could be printed at will, without any restrictions. Long gone are the days of 1 dollar = 1 dollar worth of gold in the vault; As I was so accustom to thinking by using e-gold. I started to see the Ponzi like nature of the entire economy, ranging from our debt, war spending and later… an impending collapse.
Experts agreed, the system was broken, and a wake up call was near, some considered the effects peak oil could have on a crumbling economy built upon faith and trust in the governments, leaders and The Federal Reserve.
As oil prices began to rise, and general unrest was unfolding in the economy — me and several other friends shared our research through forum posts. Some of them rants calling for a gold based monetary system, others about a rumored North American Union currency, and yes even decentralized payment systems to overcome the pitfalls of e-gold’s central nature.
Scamwatch.biz (2007)
Initiated as a joint project with PHC. This free and paid service was focused on trying to cleanup the e-gold and Liberty Reserve scams and criminals.
I thought well if they’re going to shut down the payment systems for allowing criminal behavior, let’s clean up the mess!
Using a unique affiliate opportunity: I shared the VIP monthly subscription fees with the referrals marketing it to new users. This operated approximately a year, when I ran out of my own funds and the incoming subscription fees could not sustain management costs. It was fun though, I was finally able to test EZE-Database on a large scale, discovering maximum memory limits and later creating shard functions to split the database into separate files.
KSDCAGE.com (2007)
One of my friends who also assisted early and ongoing Biznatch operations referred me to a friend of his father.
He was a local businessman that sold construction equipment and wanted to handle order processing through the website.
This was at a time when e-commerce was just beginning to become mainstream. After a few quick sales, he mentioned that the website already paid for itself. I was content and proud. It was one of my biggest clients ever, I gave him a good deal too!
Economic Collapse (2007)
One day, out of nowhere it started. Massive panic unfolding in the markets. I began to lose my sense of reality to be honest, I was processing my world around me in utter shock, remembering my past research… Was I really surprised? No. I then decided that urgency to do something to save the economy was needed, but I was powerless. I was flat broke, nobody wanted to hire any new employees and governments where talking about bailing out large corporations like GM. The world was going insane, it wasn’t just me!
Is this madness even really happening? I was puzzled, how did it get this far? Why did nobody listen to the economists triggering the warning signals years prior? I never fully understood the answers to these questions until later during my research of economics and how corrupt government officials can do whatever they want, as long as the media spews a story people will believe.
Bitcoin Launched (2008)
Wandering around the past e-gold and almost dead Liberty Reserve industry; I stumbled upon a new payment processor, totally different from anything in the past. Most people ignored it because they still could use LR, so why bother?
I thought to myself, hey this looks similar to my old idea… but it’s written in c++ — I can’t read that. What the heck does all this code mean, does this thing even work? Looks complicated, I don’t have much time for this. I said to myself. As I began to look into this new undocumented project further, I became aware it used an MD5 hashing algorithm. Quickly, I remembered a news bulletin from a year or two earlier stating that MD5 hashing was no longer secure — collision attacks where successful with standard computer hardware. Most people think that the first Bitcoin genesis block was created on Jan 3, 2009, but that was actually the second one. Developers had to quickly migrate to the newest secure HASH function at the time, SHA256.
Ignore! Yes I did that. I knew it was doomed from the start, I did not even bother with it. I was working on a laptop at the time and did not want to fry it by “mining silly coins that would get exploited in the future”. I was broke and my laptop and cloths on my back where basically all I owned at the time.
HEATMB.ca (2008)
Referred by the owner of KSD Cage, I was told HEAT Inc. was looking for a website designed and I should make a bid on the contract. I decided to do what most other businesses don’t… I had an idea for a “ballpark” range any other company would quote for a basic website, I wanted more. I needed more. They had a large paper directory with thousands of equipment and rental rates, member information, etc.
It appeared to me, the association was almost completely in the book members received upon joining, so I thought, I should put all of it on the website, and make it so easy to modify and update, even non-technical staff could do the data entry. That’s what I did, quoting slightly above my general estimate, delivering above and beyond on my expectations; I got the contract.
Blogging (2009)
MrGreenbiz.wordpress.com and KnotItorNot.blogspot.com became central hubs for releasing my research in various subjects. Without advertising, these two websites earned hundreds of thousands of visitors from google searches, I later monetized them using Text-Link-Ads.
Text-Link-Ads (2009)
This small advertising company was actually paying real cheques and Paypal to webmasters that added their small code snippet — Automatically displayed client advertisements. These monthly cheques allowed me to pay hosting fees and domain registrations for my projects, but that was it. No, I did not get rich quick from this, but it was an excellent learning experience.
Obsession with media (2009–2015)
Using whatever spare money I had, I always made sure to renew my subscriptions to note-able publication such as Fortune, Canadian Business, Forbes, Bloomberg and Real Money Perspectives (Swiss America), among others.
At this point I really did go past insanity, I was using money that could be useful for food and rent to buy magazines; Ironically, I had no time to read all the articles and just stashed them away for archival purposes. After all, we’re going through the biggest recession of my lifetime, why not save as much info about it as possible?
These magazines also helped shape my understanding of economics and politics word-wide, from real “experts”. Thank you for feeding my addiction.
Wikileaks has no payment processor (2010)
“Truth ultimately is all we have.” — Julian Assange
I woke up one day and seen this… really? That’s how far the conspiracy theories are, I guess that makes them facts. Paypal suspends lots of accounts with a long history in the past of banning users for political or other reasons, especially if they did not agree with it, even if it was legal.
I thought, if Wikileaks can’t handle donations, they can’t survive, this looks like another conspiracy reporter shut down for the truth.
Jun 14, 2011 it finally began accepting Bitcoin donations, very few people even heard of the P2P payment network at this point in time, but at least their account would not get frozen.
This was one of the most influential marketing campaigns Bitcoin ever had in its entire history… and it costed them nothing for advertising! The mainstream media was busy reporting “Wikileaks this”, “Assange that”, but little did they realize; They would continue to draw attention to the lifeline supporting it all; That was Bitcoin.
RevolutionHYIP (2011)
Taking a bit of inspiration from the Wikileaks ordeal I decided to infiltrate the dead e-gold industry. HYIP and other services migrated to Liberty Reserve and Perfect Money.
I decided to create an open, transparent and fair Ponzi scheme game. Truthfully I knew it would not sustain itself monetarily; I did not lie or hype anything or mislead new investors to pay for others, they could see everything in the open, to my surprise — most of them were really smart at managing risk from what others would consider an unstable business venture. I knew these people had much more experience at this game than me, but I had a plan…
I was sitting on a treasure trove of research, exposing the grand ponzi scheme very few people understood or wanted to grasp. The Federal Reserve Conspiracy by Eustace Mullins was the most complicated book I ever read (partially), barely understanding most of the vocabulary, I was smart enough to know the entire economy since 1913, was the largest Ponzi scheme of all.
Using this HYIP game with a ‘revolutionary’ twist, I decided to end the game by writing a small summary of my research, using hyperlinked keywords to all my sources on each “buzzword”… I knew people would get the message, even if I did not tell them directly, they could do the same research I did years prior.
“Grow up you idiots, playing Ponzi’s still? What about the real players controlling your entire lives? You think you’re still a winner?” I was cruel and direct. I hinted at a new payment processor Bitcoin and the goal of shifting the online marketplaces from what we grew so fond of and comfortable with; To a true digital marketplace that could be an alternative to the existing multi-national scam system. Most politicians had no idea their countries got raped!
Anonymous takes down Biznatch data center (2011)
RevolutionHYIP suffered DDoS attacks daily, hackers tried to bypass the scripting system but it wasn’t what they understood. There was no SQL database for injection attacks. Cross Site scripting exploits were eliminated by using proper input checking, and I even created a simple dynamic DDoS firewall to mitigate the attacks, but that was not enough.
I woke up one morning, Biznaturally.ca, Bituminex, HEAT, KSDCAGE websites OFFLINE! My server was rooted and displayed a picture similar to the one above: “Hacked by Anonymous, next time I want to see more security” They attacked the entire data-center I was leasing a dedicated server from! I quickly migrated to another and was back online within 24 hours. The attack did not yield the hacking group any usable information, except EZE-Database, EZE-Cores, Some personal and business e-mails, etc. I had nothing to leak that would be considered valuable, I thought whatever you guys just wasted your time.
I guess I pissed off the wrong people with RevolutionHYIP, hmm k lesson learned. But little did I know all my work was carefully analyzed like it was some kind of flying saucer crash landing in someone’s back yard. To me it was shit code, silly emails, and I was already working on Version 2 for most of my products anyways.
Manitoba Bullies (2011)
Pixel Perfect Media was one of my largest competing web-design firms, and to my surprise; They asked me to convert a flash based website to HTML/CSS/Javascript to display properly on modern browsers without the Flash plugin.
I did not charge enough, and lost money on the project but I created a “bad ass” website and could probably get a good deal on a dog in the future, so naturally it was more of a learning experience I got paid for.
Windeck — Do it once, do it right! (2011)
Facing financial difficulties; I struggled to compete with large local web-design and software development firms. Lawn care was slow because Manitoba was under a phase of drought and the grass simply wasn’t growing in mid summer. In late 2011, I met a man named Mel Dueck; Who owned a growing family operated business in the construction industry. I did not know him personally, but apparently he knew about me. I was invited to his shop from a mutual friend we both had, I was slightly critical of his website initially, but was impressed with his warehouse and shop. This guy is huge… The real deal I thought. Sadly, I was unable to sell any computer or web-design services to him until years later.
He needed people who knew how to build decks, install aluminum railing and maintenance free — environmentally friendly products. At first, I was hesitant to his offer of employment. I am a computer guy, but grew up in a family of mechanics and carpenters, so the task of using my hands to build something was natural.
I played Lego most of my childhood so I thought, hey this is like that but for adults! Might be fun and not feel like work; More than I first understood and later considered this was fateful in some ways. He was one of the investors in the failed consulting firm I helped take down years earlier. This man had an incredibly high level of respect for me. I only learned this bizarre connection after working with him and building a bond and trust with his employees and family. He kept his admiration for me somewhat secret, for awhile.
In the back of my mind, I also considered the simple fact it was perfect timing for me to learn reputable management and sales skills from a man with more years experience than my age in an industry that literally is building our country from the ground up, he already “made it big”. I began to sub-contract.
With a “go get em” attitude, his team and me; Overcame hundreds of obstacles, we were personally responsible for over 70% of all new condo, apartment or home construction in Manitoba. I would show up at the shop or job-site like all his other employees helping him everyday for approximately 5 and a half years. I was trained by the best of the best and became very good friends with his family, senior installers, and even business partners and friends.
The market was ripe, Windeck needed to be more organized and efficient. In the back of my mind I was building a tech solution to manage his inventory, staff and even client scheduling or interactions with other sub-trades on large or complex and time-sensitive projects. A blockchain based mobile application but without blocks, they did not need that type of consensus, a different data-chains system with relational databases using of course — EZE-Database.
I first needed to learn how he already did business before I could tell him how to do it better. Although, this was completely out of my element to join the manual labor task force, I knew the growth potential was obvious — at least for the short term, and the skilled trades are a stable source of income. I was always a keen supporter for finding new creative ways to do tasks more efficiently and profitable, I also enjoyed a challenge. I thought, well why not get paid to exercise, be outside with interesting people all day and learn how to build a house or even a condo building. Pretty neat stuff going on… why not?
His business was struggling with growing pains, it was getting too big, too quickly. Micro-management became forced macro-management with slight shortfalls when we focused on certain customers while ignoring others due to lacked of skilled workers. A constant juggling match to shift his best guys from priority to priority was no longer in his physical control, there was too much data to keep track of. Too many variables and too many surprises. This man was a living machine I discovered. I often wondered: How the heck does he manage most of his 15 employees on roughly 10 different job-sites with only a handful of office staff, some of them inexperienced at installation procedures and still learning their expectations as a manager?
This was not easy mission as I was considered a sub-contracted consultant that did everything from problem solving through onsite-engineering and scheduling, to grunt work, carpentry and installation. There was many moments I told myself… what are you doing here? More often than not this was only when my co-workers discovered I was not just an “employee”. Truthfully, I was what the owner’s son said: “a fricken boss”.
I already had a registered corporation in a totally different industry. At times the customers often became confused how I was able to take complete leadership control over large projects, ensuring all parties cooperated and the outcome was beneficial for everyone, sometimes even going above Mel’s head. I was more than an installer, I was a hybrid manager too! It was a shock and surprise when they figured it out for themselves, and entertaining for me to witness their reactions. A win-win ending as you walked off the completed job-site, was often more rewarding than the paycheck Mel was so generously willing to give us. We turned the worst job-sites into the most entertaining and hilarious ones, earning respect from other trades companies and general contractors in charge of project management.
This is where I became very good friends with Derek McMahon, we would walk into the most delayed, disorganized “code-red” job-sites and wouldn’t let ourselves get walked all over. We made sure we won, and everyone needed to stay out of our way — at the end of the day, without railing on your balcony; Nobody moves into the entire apartment building if the inspector wants to give you a rough time. Meeting what most considered impossible deadlines and obstacles was our goal — The Dream Team! We made sure our side of the contract was met and it wasn’t our fault if the building failed an occupancy inspection.
SPPDNP (2013)
Taking inspiration from Ripostle and the already established Tor network — I could see the need for additional protocols to replace and enhance HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
I never started to code anything for this project as I was busy on other ones. I decided to post this PDF document directly on the biznaturally.ca website for everyone to view.
This was NEVER intended to be embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain through OP_RETURN codes, I wanted to create an entirely new protocol.
Better Money Blog — Douglas Jackson 2015
A few years after the downfall of e-gold, Dr. Douglas Jackson was unable to continue working on a replacement. He was ordered to never own or control any part of a digital payment system, but could still write about his knowledge.
I would carefully analyze all the material he was publishing, struggling to learn the economics and political incentives, attempting to grasp the ideology of e-gold and the influence it once had among the internet. There is such vital information contained in this blog, I would suggest anyone who has extra time go and read it for themselves.
Fakesatsoshi (2013-2016)
Out of the blue, appears Craig Wright on The Economist, touting he invented Bitcoin.
Wait what? I don’t even know you fool, or do I? I thought. I have been releasing countless pieces of software to help in the development of decentralized networks since I was 17, and now he invented it?
I was beyond mad. A clue as to what could be happening with this patsy figure was the publication also responsible for promoting a one world currency in a previous issue. Central bankers I thought, they’re paying Craig to hijack this open-source project, they know they’re doomed. Of course later discovering this man got paid millions of dollars to pressure influential Bitcoin developers to mutilate the Bitcoin source code; Changing the consensus protocol to include ChainActive and IBD through pull request #4420 with the help of Sipa, and Gavin Anderson.
A few years prior, I was getting pressured by local people connected to Craig to join him, I utterly refused… but kept getting harassed. Their libel and slander was ruthless, and childish, damaging to my reputation… Later this campaign turned embarrassing towards themselves when other people around me started to connect the dots as well, and seen through the lies.
This man appeared to have previous connections with Scott Spence, and I assumed he even planted members of his family living in my home town as “moles” to gather any information they could. This could be my conspiracy paranoia, I have no definitive proof on this. In the past I had friends turn to enemies quickly, and that type of behavior is notorious with Craig Wright who openly admitted he wanted to “Kill Satoshi”.
Mining & altcoin experiments (2016–2017)
I never mined any Bitcoins prior. Due the bug in proof of work; I was aware of for quite some time, and lack of equipment — I simply avoided it.
The network difficulty was way too high to even consider making any profit from mining efforts unless I had a substantial initial investment. Buying used and outdated mining rigs from e-bay with my daily earnings from Windeck, I setup a small shed in my parents back yard. It was a makeshift lab as I attempted to grasp the flawed logic of mining at a loss to achieve long term profits.
At this time, alternative coins (forks of Bitcoin source code) were launched daily. New coins all over the place, mostly just copycats of Bitcoin, some had slight improvements and changes.
I decided this would be an opportunity to learn and discover early Bitcoin difficulty days that I had missed out on due to lack of equipment and spare time, or concerns for security.
I sat in my mining farm for hours late at night, wondering where the math went wrong… Comforted by the spinning fans and blinking LEDs, I would tell myself: “Is this really what we should be doing”? I knew the required energy consumption was far past the square footage of the sheds roof; If filled it with solar panels, I would still need supplemental sources.
While I was working at Windeck I got a call from my neighbor informing me that my “shed was on fire”.
Most people would consider this devastating, I used it as a learning experience. Apparently a faulty power bar cord was the cause of the blaze. My outdated equipment for experimenting with new coins was gone. I had no intentions to replace it either, not unless it was 100 times the size to ensure profitability.
The Bitcoin Firewall & BATA (2017)
One of the alternative coins that I was mining was BATA. It was ignored by most miners, the difficulty still made it somewhat profitable for small miners like me.
And then it started, out of nowhere the price shot up from under 1 cent to a dollar almost overnight! I seen the warnings in other small alt-coins that previously suffered a 51% attack and then was abandoned… NOT MY BATA I shouted out loud, and then decided to sell everything at almost the peak price, shorting the pump and dump group. Purchasing my BTA back in full multiplied by bout 5 — While the attackers sold all their coins for whatever price they could, even if it was at a loss.
Later, I discovered they artificially inflated the price and was able to double-spend 79 BTA though Bittrex Exchange. Shortly after, was when I became active in the development team for BATA; desperately trying to search for quick solutions to prevent further destruction. I was almost powerless, I had no idea what all the Bitcoin source code did, nor was I fluent in c++. A quick solution was to pay in BTC to mine BTA at a loss, ensuring we always had the majority of the network hash power.
I was searching for solutions I could patch into the code and still maintain a decentralized consensus among nodes. With the assistance of the lead BATA developer, Midnightminer he focused my attention on net.cpp as “this might be where the cause is”, I just needed to search for it within 2400+ lines of code, alright no big issue right?
My idea was based on the DDoS protection I implemented into RevolutionHYIP for detecting a pattern of high-frequency data requests from the same IP address and then banning future connections immediately.
Simple right? Not for Bitcoin. A decentralized network where nodes and peers can join and leave as they wish: Uses high-frequency traffic when new wallets join the network and initially synchronize, later switching to low-frequency data transmissions, it almost appears totally random.
After a few short c++ tutorials; I realized: wait a second, I know this stuff, it’s almost identical to PHP syntax! As I carefully analysed the contents of net.cpp, it was apparent to me, I really was in over my head in terms of creating this project by myself, even if it was buggy the project was far more ahead than I could ever have hoped to achieve. I couldn’t help feel slightly saddened and forever grateful to Hal’s dedication and contribution as a cypherpunk, he will be forever missed by many.
I had to act quickly, BTA was under 51% attack daily, that lasted over a year. I knew the small development team could not support mining the coin at a loss to simply secure the network from intruders. Nor could we sit and monitor nodes and manually ban IP addresses — That was if we could catch a chain fork during broadcast, but how… what does that even look like? I was utterly lost for solutions until I remembered an experiment Hal used while he exploited Netscape’s security.
The 40-bit secret part of the key is 7e f0 96 1f a6. I found it by a brute force search on a network of about 120 workstations and a few parallel computers at INRIA, Ecole Polytechnique, and ENS.
Wait a second I thought — Was I looking for a key/lock or a special signature that could identify an attacking node from a normal node on the network…
After carefully watching the network traffic graph I would notice large spikes in bandwidth use.
I remembered looking at this screen before the attacks began and it was not anywhere near the level of bandwidth use, something else was odd. The ratio between received and sent bytes! If I could write some source code that would evaluate each node by their bandwidth ratio and use an average between nodes; Any attacker would be out of range with a sudden spike by sending their forked chain and could be banned based upon that alone.
Taking into consideration how Hal was able to exploit Netscape; I asked BATA users to test the first firewall in BTA core 10.4.1 and send me the debug.log so I could do a proper analysis to ensure no false positive nodes were banned.
Using very basic artificial intelligence and semi-machine learning; The worlds first Bitcoin Firewall was able to automatically prevent the spread of the attacking forked chain, removing any possibility for a successful double-spend. In real-time, without human interactions — all the nodes on the network were responsible for securing the integrity of the blockchain. I was able to use the debug.log information from several nodes and fine tune the firewall to disconnect that peer right before the attacking chain caught up to the rest of valid chain on the network as shown below.
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/ssl/announce.txt
Dynamic Token (2017)
Several years after initially developing the Hash Tree, I was still struggling with the basic fact that tokens, (IE: coins) would be created out of thin air, yes there was a maximum. I was still struggling with the concept implemented in Bitcoin; the difficulty was adjusted based upon the actual time-span and amount of accepted blocks before the target time-span.
I never fully established what the tokens would actually be represented as, just that they would be evaluated using a hashing digest during validations.
Taking some inspiration from password cracking — I knew that a string of a specific length would be increasingly more difficult to break if many peers are trying already existing combinations without ignoring past attempts or already validated one. A fixed maximum token limit was determined by the length of string and the allowed combination of characters for each position in it. I assumed it would would be a game of luck as new combinations are tried and evaluated, limiting only 1 valid one per interval time-span.
I plan on developing this concept further in the future when I have time.
Blockchain Framework Project (2017)
The lack of robust, easy to implement decentralized application frameworks encouraged me to begin design on BFP written initially in PHP.
Using a modified version on EZE-Cores, integrated with EZE-Database; A side-chain or complete blockchain application could be implemented using web-based programming languages like PHP/HTML/Javascript in efforts to recruit new talent into the industry and foster innovation with a secure based shared among dapps.
Profit Share Platform (2017)
With the rise of ICOs, I was concerned about the reputation for crypto-assets in general.
I was attempting to test this new method for crowdfunding using BATA, then all of a sudden Bittrex began demanding a legal letter to ensure it was not a security. This was concerning because they refused to acknowledge that Profit Shares was a separate platform to BATA, and de-listed it along with several other projects.
Profit Shares was still in development and was not even functional yet, so why were they so concerned about a coin that was going to be accepted on it in the future?
This appeared to be a targeted attack, even after Profit Shares was removed from the internet entirely; BATA was still removed from Bittrex and the price crashed to virtually nothing. Most of the investors seen this as the last phase of 51% attack from earlier, exit dump. Ironically, this was the very thing Profit Shares was designed to prevent through conventional crypto based crowd funding.
Profit Hunters Coin (2018)
I noticed Derek’s strength and experience in the construction industry and began to teach him basic computer skills and later, Linux and entry level programming. In 2017, we both founded Profit Hunters Coin and will continue to maintain the same attitude we had while we played our adult sized Lego in the sun, as we progress in our future missions and challenges within the blockchain and IT-industry. One of the most valuable life lessons I learned while working with Windeck — will always a remain piece of my own mission statement. Regardless of what industry I am working in. I’m often reminded of a quote that Mel once told me very early in our friendship: “Whatever you’re doing, do it to the best of your abilities”.
My thoughts on Satoshi (2019)
Craig Wright is really starting to piss me off now, I am beyond ballistic angry. Does he not understand Bitcoin or is he on a mission to make my life a living hell? I assumed he was involved in Renaissance Consulting and never trusted him or anyone associated with him in the past. This guy is a compulsive liar and would never even remotely understand the quiet beginnings of the worlds first decentralized currency. If I am wrong and he is just trying to take over Bitcoin; He will soon find out that can’t be done. Not even I can do that without total agreement from all nodes and participants.
Everyone who truly understands Bitcoin and the critical time period; Knows it was entirely economic and politically motivated. Craig Wright has constantly contradicted himself more times than he can even count, cyber bullying, harassment, falsified documents, statements without reference or fact — are all things the general population associate with someone who Satoshi Nakamoto despised. People don’t forget overnight; A network that’s transparent, censorship resistant and supported by peer contributions.
Yes, I “invented and shared” pieces of the grand puzzle now known as Bitcoin, do I consider myself Satoshi, absolutely not. I am a mentor. This symbolic name was assigned to the group of developers, early adopters and economists working tirelessly, without pay to support a half-baked idea of mine — inspired by many concepts from those I admire dearly.
I knew from day 1 that it would take significantly more years to build by myself than it did over the span of 10 years with thousands of people. “We are Anonymous” movement was symbolic of “We are Satoshi”, a rebellious group of cypherpunks — crazy enough to think they could change the world; Using nothing more than a modem, a computer and secure source code with some old fashion affiliate marketing strategies from the good old e-gold days.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ― Anaïs Nin
Based upon my own past experiences, those of Dr. Douglas Jackson, Hal Finny, Julian Assange, and countless others; The Elitists bankers, politicians and their minions will do anything in their power to maintain their control over society. They will lie and destroy someone through mental torture, constant harassment or kill them physically. Anyone experiencing this, stay true to your inner voice… Never give up on your quest for the truth and always publish as much as you can. Tell the world even if you’re scared!
“Don’t worry, Mr Maxwell, I’m not hiding any more. You’ll get your day in court and, at the end of all of it, a free room, a board, and a nice new orange suit.” — Craig Wright
Damn kids, they’re all alike… Yes Mr. Wright, I am also a criminal.
“My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something you will never forgive me for.” +++The Mentor+++