Hello Steemit, and Dear Steemers!

Greetings from Taipei, Taiwan!

I am so happy to have found Steemit, and to know this place exists. I see it as a grand and awesome experiment -- a practical, fascinating and leading edge use of blockchain technology, and I’m really excited to be a part of it.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a traveler by nature, and preternaturally curious about the world. I’m half Japanese and half European, but I was born in America. After graduating from college in the U.S., I made my way to Japan to explore my roots and check out Asia. Here’s a picture of me in my apartment in Tokyo as a young man, trying to look cool like the poster of Andy Warhol above me.

That picture was taken around 1991 or so, about a year after the silent bursting of Japan’s “bubble economy.” No one realized that the party was over until long after the fact, something that I've thought about for years.

(That apartment didn't have a shower or bath. The sento, the public bath, was about a five minute walk from home.)

In the mid 90s, I worked as a stockbroker in the U.S. The big stocks of the day were Microsoft, Intel, Micron Technology and Taiwan Semiconductor. Those were the leading edge companies powering the global desktop PC revolution, and helping fulfill Bill Gates’ original mission of “A computer on every desk and in every home.”

Once the Internet arrived on the scene and started connecting all those computers, the bull market in stocks exploded into a full blown mania. Stocks of companies having anything remotely to do with the Internet were rocketing off into space. People were quitting their jobs to day trade.

I quit my job too, but to travel, not to trade. In 1998 just as the dot.com boom was ramping up (and with Y2K looming on the horizon) I quit my job as a stockbroker to travel the world and see the places that I had only read about in books. I traveled to over a dozen countries, and it really opened my mind to see just how big the world is. It was a turning point in my life.

I got tired of keeping my hair in my head, and in my chin, so I let it grow, wild and free! This is me in Israel, with the Dome of the Rock in the background.

After the Y2K mania subsided and I got back home, I needed to find a job. The Internet boom was still coasting along on fumes, so I learned some HTML and got a job with a little web design company in my hometown. Business was great! Until it wasn’t, and then winter set in.

I got laid off, and started a few websites of my own, some of which I ran for many years and one of which got pretty big.

At that website -- the popular one -- I was gifted a few Bitcoin when it was trading for around $20 and I’ve held on to those first coins ever since. It has been like the late Dow Theory newsletter writer Richard Russell said about dividend investing: “At first it’s boring. Then it starts to get interesting. Then it gets down right fascinating!”

As far as crytocurrencies go, we’re definitely in the fascinating phase! With all the ICOs recently, it feels kind of bubbly. But having seen a few bubbles in my life, I think we’re still in the very early stages. We're just getting started.

In my career as a stockbroker, I will never forget the day that Netscape came public in the summer of 1995. It was like a comet flying by at ground level – big and brilliant and utterly confusing. No one really knew what the hell it did, but you could tell from the price action that you had to pay attention. People just stared at it in awe. The stock was set to IPO at $14, but was doubled at the last minute to $28, and it opened at $74! There had never been anything like it.

That was the official kick-off of the dot.com era boom. The internet had arrived on the scene and began reordering everything in society, and it is still not done, because the Blockchain is built on top of that architecture.

To me, Bitcoin is like Netscape in that respect: It is the first, and it is huge. It is a sign, a harbinger. People still don't completely understand what it means, and we probably won't for years to come. But still we stand in reverence and awe of this creation. It is like a giant, blinking neon sign saying: PAY ATTENTION!

This is the next phase in the ongoing evolution of the “Technium,” as Kevin Kelly called it in his book, What Technology Wants.

I believe that the Blockchain will have a bigger impact on global society, economics, culture and politics than the internet has had to date, and we are still in the very early stages of a revolution. Bitcoin is not even 10 years old yet. A couple of days ago the Chinese government banned ICOs, but this will not stop the boom. It may slow it down temporarily, but this technology won’t be stopped.

This is just one of the things that I’m interested in discussing here on Steemit, and learning from other members of the community. A few other interests include:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Longevity/anti-aging science
• Blockchain and cryptocurrencies (of course)
• Stocks and the stock market
• Books and Movies – both fiction and non fiction (Can't wait for the new Blade Runner)
• Prince (so sad when he died!)
• Taiwan

Please drop me a line if you share any of these interests as well. Like I said at the beginning, I’m so happy to have found this place! I’m impressed by how international this community is, how giving and sharing it is. It is like a breath of fresh air, and reminds me of what the internet was like in its early days (before Google and Facebook ruined it, ha ha).

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to learning and growing with you all in the future.

For now, just call me Beat.

Taipei Beat.