First I would Like to start off with the interview from the Article with Miami Herald after the Hack and collapse had occurred.
It has taken me awhile to finally introduce myself on SteemIt. As many of you may already know since late 2012 I have been involved in Crypto space. It wasn't until recently at the Bitcoin conference where more people in the space told me I need to get out there and share my story as an earlier adopter.
The name in the space I go by is Crypto MaAk and a guy named Paul had mentioned this new technology called Bitcoin when I was working at a tech support company in sunny south Florida. I looked into it and immediately was intrigued by the power of the technology and bought some around $50. I read the Satoshi white paper several times and I jumped into Crypto full time. I was talking about this technology that 99% of the population had never heard of. I was in school at the time and mentioned it to a kid and the next week he had told me he was hired at a Bitcoin Company. The ad for job listing was no longer listed so I had asked him for the address and walked in there with confidence.
The first question BigVern asked me was if I knew what Bitcoin was at the time I had about 5 of those physical bitcoins I purchased and handed him one. I was hired right on the spot. To me it was never about the money that could be made in crypto it was about the technology and how I believed it was the future. This is where I met up with one of the top people in the Industry named Mullick he is a wallet specialist and a coin code guru. He has one of the best step by step guides to creating a coin (Non-ICO). I would ask him as many questions and quickly rose up the ranks to Tier 2 support where all the major issues on the exchange came to me. If anyone remembers we also had Alt Explorer which was my responsibility to sync all the blockchains and keep an eye out for forks.
Everything was moving so quickly in the industry, we quickly became one of the most popular exchanges and working there several of us were in back rooms on Skype working with people I considered friends. Our goal was to grow the crypto space and focus on new ideas. It was also a fast way for each other to contact owners or developers of certain coins or other exchanges to get answers faster then the average user.
The company was taking off we added USD support, we grew our support operations, moved into a bigger office and added Mintsy the mining company. Next was the big heart break of the Lucky7Coin having malicious code which was able to steal funds from the wallet. Lay offs came shortly after even though we were told that we were solvent. The rest of the story is history of BigVern running off with the remaining customer funds. It is believed he is located in China and he not only left customers with a sour taste but his employees as well.
I came into this space believing in the technology and the community growing to push Bitcoin into the mainstream. The goal was always How many unbanked people have you banked? How many people did you help get into the space and teach the basics?
It wasn't just about BigVern leaving us out to dry that was the worst part, the worst was all the people in the space that we had become friends with and communicated with on a daily basis started attacking the employees in the backrooms. Many people I considered friends lost funds due to the hack and they took their anger out on the only people they could.
Due to the large outpour of people continuing to message me privately and saying things in the backroom, I felt like the goals I set out to make in Crypto I failed. I packed up and sold 80% of crypto I was holding at the time and removed myself from the space for an entire year. The fall of Cryptsy and how everything was handled made me hate the Crypto space that I had fell in love with.
It wasn't until I was back working a normal 9-5 Job, I was depressed and miserable fixing broken laptops and sweeping networks for viruses and needing to do patch work amongst a list of other job responsibilities. I went from a Job that didn't feel like a job for 2 years to a job that I wish I never had. Finally the words Bitcoin were mentioned again and I decided it was time to stop punching the clock doing something I hated. I handed in my two week notice and without work jumped back into Crypto full time for myself again in 2016.
In 2017 due to reaching out with connections of the past and still being involved in back rooms, the heat had calmed down and most people apologized realizing that it was not the employees fault for the hack and stolen customer funds. It made me appreciate being back in the space. It also helped land me multiple consulting jobs. My expertise with customer support structure and work flow in Crypto space was needed with the large influx of new users coming into the space so rapidly. I am happy to announce that since 2017 I have been back working for the crypto exchange industry.
Since the start of 2017 after years of preaching Bitcoin majority of my friends were able to invest early on into Ethereum and now more and more of my friends continue to come and I set them up with Coinbase, set them up on exchanges and tech them the BASICS.
It has been rough sitting back in silence for the longest time. In the Cryptsy days we had a bunch of PRE-MINE coins and scams. I am sure most of you guys remember the infamous Josh Garza and Paycoin. Now we have the same thing but we call them ICOS. 95% of these are money grabs and attract people for the wrong reasons you will only see a few of these survive if they have real life use cases. Where there is money there will always be scammers like Garza, BigVern, Mark Karpeles, Bitconnect. The promise of financial freedom only to destroy people when they believed in the space and found a new way to invest without going to the stock market.
What happened to teaching people and improving on the space? Now a days this industry is riddled with pumpers shilling their bags to twitter followers who get crushed buying the leaders bags. Facebook is filled with all these Crypto Experts and youtube channels who were popular are now in 2018 CRYPTO experts when they most likely purchased at $18,000.
Heres a problem from an Exchange perspective with the influx of new users coming into the space the space has grown so much it is hard to keep up with it. All exchanges can hire 100 People a day but most people don't realize that there are not enough qualified people in the space to hire quickly enough to keep up with the pace. You hire and have to train and the list continues to go on. Also from tickets side of things 30% of tickets that come in are basic questions and general questions such as How do I deposit or issues such as sending funds like Bitcoin to BitcoinCash wallets. If you are getting your friends into the crypto space you have the responsibility to teach them the basics first. I would never let one of my friends invest and leave them to figure out how to send money somewhere else to find out they sent to the wrong wallet and now they don't have any funds.
Reach out to people and get them involved but most importantly help your friends and teach them the basics first. This game is a long term HODL. We can all make money in this space but we also need to build on it. Even at the "North American Bitcoin Conference" It would of been nice to of had a few speakers talking on the subject of Bitcoin and the scalability issue going on amongst the list of other issues we face. It was a Bitcoin conference and there was no Bitcoin talk.
Before you ask my answer will be similar to Andreas in terms of Bitcoin wealth. No I don't drive a LAMBO. When Cryptsy collapsed and everyone came flipping out to us employees like I said I sold 80% of my crypto net worth and quit the game for an entire year. It was never about the money to me but I am riding with the rest of you when I say I hope Paul Vernon is brought to justice and given the Karma he deserves.
Here is to 2018 ladies and gentlemen. If you guys need exchange advice or how to avoid certain issues on exchanges or how to best handle certain situations I am here to help! No question is too small or too big. I am back in the space and I will be more publicly available to everyone.
I want to give a huge shout out to everyone I met at the Bitcoin Conference In Miami it is down there where they all made me realize that I helped build and be there in the beginning of crypto space and the noobs need me to stick around and help them out just like the people that helped me over the years. Shout out to people such as Mullick, Jim Blasko and Marshall Long and Horus. These are all guys I truly respect in this space and will do anything for with no questions asked.
My main shout out goes to Horus as he was the one who reached out and told me who was hiring and to make sure I got in back to where I truly fit in in this world. Crypto is my life and I apologize to everyone for leaving for that year.
I wish health and crypto wealth in 2018 to each and everyone of my followers. Lets keep the blockchain and crypto moving flowing well into the next generation!!!!
BITCOIN
ETH
Blockchain.
Below you will find the bitcointalk forum link with all the news and updates on Cryptsy if you are a noob and unfamiliar with what happened.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1328521.0
This is the pastebin of the Cryptsy hack and they have narrowed down the suspects and the developer of the Lucky7Coin The Feds have been working hard and have seized everything BigVern paid for in customer funds. He will be brought to justice and has already been ordered to pay back $8 million dollars.