Hello Steem, I'm Mark, I'm 31 and I joined Steem a few weeks ago. Mark.Erik is actually my pseudonym as I'd like to keep a certain degree of anonymity (or pseudonymity for that matter - since I don't believe a total anonymity is possible on internet anymore). I wanted to create a blog for quite some time now, covering various topics concerning economy, investing, blockchain and history, but up untol now I haven`t found the right time. After I found Steem I think the time now.
Story of my life
I was born and raised in the city of Kosice, located in eastern part of Slovakia. It is second biggest city in the country, with around 250k inhabitants. In 1985 it was still part of Czechoslovakia until "velvet divorce" - peaceful dissolution in 1993. However, I don't have any special memories from the event itself. The life went on as usual I guess. Anyway, after college I went to study economics to Prague, Czech Republic, where I got my Bachelor's degree in business economics, had a year break and then finished Master's degree in finance. I must admit I went through a personal crisis during the one-year break. I lost interest in the subject I studied, I didn't know what I want to do in life, what to do with my life. Still I decided to finish the darn school first, and I got lucky - I met my roommate and we became good friends. He introduced me to the books of Robert Kiyosaki and to a new set of thinking.
How I decided to be become investor
It's quite strange that I already had a pretty decent knowledge of the economy, markets, banking industry and how it all works together, but one book written in a very simple manner - Rich dad poor dad - completely changed my point of view on those subjects. Suddenly there was a new goal in my life - I decided to get passive income, to become rich, and I wanted to do it by using knowledge gained from university. Studying had a meaning again.
I found out that schools are established to prepare good employees for companies, not to bring benefit to its students, and that financial financial literacy has to be learned by self study.
How I got to Steem project and my beginnings with cryptocurrencies
Living with my roommate in dormitory had another pros as well - I was introduced to an alternative media sites such as zerohedge, and around October 2013 I heard about bitcoin for the first time. It got my attention almost immediately, I was already more inclined to Austrian economic school rather than mainstream Keynesian, and I welcomed the idea of money issued by a code and not by some central institution parted from reality. I invested smaller amount in it, and even experimented with other alts like feathercoin. However, only by a mere chance I closed all of my open positions before the big decline of price in Dec. The big volatility of bitcoin finally drove me off and it wasn't until Feb this year when I returned to blockchain. This time my attention was attracted by ethereum project - especially due to its innovative chain focused on smart contracts - and I kept my eyes open for yet another game changer. On July I joined Steem.
Steem is a blockchain project like no other - I like how the whole project is focused on social networking, bringing the principles of blockchain (immutability, censorship resistancy, decentralization, ) to the field which people nowadays use the most on internet. In the world where big companies regularly censor unwelcomed opinion or have no problem selling your information to NSA, this is the solution we needed. Not to mention that the project seems well prepared and community of developers are very active. I'm glad to be part of it.
Next on: My investment beginnings and how I started with passive income. Stay tuned.
P.S: As you probably noticed in the text, English in not my native language so I apologize in advance for any grammar/other mistakes.