So, I first got into the crypto space
back when it was just called the bitcoin space around 2011.
I heard about bitcoin in a couple of places.
I thought it was something really interesting.
I started getting into the community more and more.
I co-founded Bitcoin Magazine which was
this, kind of, online site and eventually a print magazine
that talked about bitcoin-related
technical, social, economic, whatever topics.
And I did a lot of bitcoin-related things
for about two years.
Eventually dropped out of university
to join the space full-time.
And soon after that I started to realize
that there were a lot more interesting things
that you could do with blockchains
than just a single peer-to-peer currency.
And this was something a lot of other people
were starting to recognize at the same time.
I came up with the idea behind Ethereum.
This idea of a blockchain with a
built-in programming language as, kind of, what I thought
was the simplest and kind of, most logical way
to actually build a platform that can be used
for many more kinds of applications.
Just too limited functionality.
So like, think of the difference between something
like a pocket calculator and a smartphone,
where a pocket calculator does one thing
and it does one thing well,
but really people want to do all these other things.
And if you have a smartphone then on the smartphone
you have a pocket calculator as an app.
You have playing music as an app.
You have a web browser as an app
and pretty much everything else.
So basically taking that same kind of idea
of increasing the power of the system
by making it more general purpose
and applying it to blockchains.