I connected to the Internet for the first time in 1994 via a dial-up modem. It was an amazing feeling, when after 3 months trial and error, I’ve suddenly been connected, chatting with a scientist in California via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). He was equally surprised to have a police officer on tower duty in Munich on the other side. Three years later I left the federal police to work full-time with the Internet and all my colleagues called me crazy. After all, I’ve just made it into a level, where the government can’t fire you anymore and you are safe for the rest of your life, unless you terribly fuck up. Email, WWW, FTP, IRC. I showed it to them, and I’ve been talking about it every day and using these services. No one ever would have thought that it will end up on your phone and to be a vital part in our lives. I expected something like this. After all, I’ve been reading a lot of William Gibson books.
Today we are depending on the Internet and that we are always connected. All kinds of services were taken online, no matter if the original business agreed with it, or not. Napster revolutionized the music business and led to services such as Apple music or Spotify. They made Vinyl, CDs, MP3 players or even radio stations obsolete. I remember a session with SONY music executives in their office in New York. When they asked me about my opinion about Napster and where all of this is going. I suggested to counteract Napster with online access to Sony music’s online catalog as MP3s. The weekly or monthly subscription fee should depend on the down-loaders internet speed (bandwidth), which determines, how much can be downloaded. The Sony music executives shook their heads in disbelieve. They would never do that and rather fight Napster. Today, they are doing exactly what I suggested, just that they make less money with it, since some else runs the largest platforms of customers and they need to cater to them, share revenue and accept their rules.
While I had a good idea about the future of the music business, I didn’t when crypto currencies arrived. I would probably be rich, if I would have understood what came our way. Its another technology revolution, which will kill the banking system and stock markets. Eventually I got interested in crypto and I took a two-week workshop with a friend, who is Mathematics Professor, a database specialist and a known tech consultant for investors and crypto companies in the Silicon Valley. He explained everything to me in detail. How things work, the technology behind it, the risks and the common mistakes coin issuers are making. As well as market manipulation through “pump & dump”. After all this new market isn’t hardly regulated, although the SEC and others are trying to get a grip on it.
One of the most important takes I took from this workshop was, when my friend said the following:
“Do you remember, when you worked as a web designer for my online community in 1997? Remember, how limited and faulty things were at that time (in terms of technology). Crypto today is, where the WWW was in 1997. There is so much more to come in the next years, and it will eventually become mainstream and an essential part of our lives”.
He said that in 2018 and we have moved further, ever since. It seems we are still far from reaching the full potential of crypto currencies, coin-issues and blockchain technology.
If you are a novice and interested in crypto currencies, NFTs, coin issues and the technology that makes it happen, then you should have a look at “Crypto Caseys” channels. She is on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and even has Podcasts on Spotify and Apple Music. Casey explains everything in a simple way. Gives security advice and an outlook, how things will develop in her mind. Short-term and long-term. This isn’t a channel for experts or techies, but they may find her short stories entertaining as well.
Check her out: https://cryptocasey.com/
