Greetings, Steem community!
My name is Francois, or Snoberlokista, a white(!) African. Although I'm from European descent, my ancestors have been in Africa for so long, that I don't even know where they originally came from. I was born in Africa and I will die in Africa. Some might think I'm an intruder, but this is the only home I have ever known.
So I am 53 years old, which I believe is slightly old for someone who actually dabbles in social media, crypto currencies and similar creatures. Obviously my generation's idea of computers was quite different from the people of this day and age. I can still remember looking with awe at the massive tape drives and CPUs in a company's computer centre. The massive memory they had (measured in kilobytes!) was too much to comprehend.
I went through primary school and secondary school without ever touching a computer. In my first year of college, my father bought a Spectravideo SV318 computer with 32k RAM and 32k ROM, and within a few days I wrote my first computer program in BASIC.
Being only interested in video games, I set off trying to write a game, concentrating so much on the sounds and graphics, that the 32k ROM was full before any real programming could take place. So that project was filed. My curiosity being piqued, though, everything relating to computers and programming became my food, with an unhealthy large interest in playing games, no-one wants to grow up!
I studied to become a pharmacist and was quite impressed with the idea that computers can be used very well in the pharmacy environment, printing labels and instructions for instance. When I had to do my pharmacy internship, it was at a pharmacy that was one of the first in the country to use computers. During my internship they upgraded their system to a state of the art system with full stock control and I was in heaven!
Moving forward a few decades, in 2015 (six years after it was invented) I became aware of Bitcoin. Now 50 years old, I was slightly more interested in providing for my retirement than in playing games, I realised that the only this thing can go is up! I bought some bitcoin and squandered it on a Ponzi scheme, bought some more and lost it on several different schemes.
Now I know Buy and Hold is the only way to go.
Now I have become aware of other crypto currencies, suddenly I learnt that there are more than 500 different ones! I just learnt about STEEM, seems to be a different flavour in the Crypto world, i would like to be part of this.
Maybe more later
Cheers!