Dan Larimer: A Genius of Our Times

The world is going through a financial, political, social revolution: the Blockchain Revolution. Throughout history, the world has seen some inventions that have changed the way we live. From the automobile to the printing press, these technological advances have had a great impact on our lives.

Things just keep getting faster and faster though. If you were born 500 years ago, the technological changes would have had little impact on your life. For example, it took decades and centuries to notice the impact of the printing press. Fast forward to today, people who got information from the radio as a child now get instant information on their mobile phone. The internet has had a great impact on our lives, and now it's time for the blockchain. And the blockchain is much more than just currency. Just look at the website you are on right now: Steemit. It's amazing. It's liberty. It's decentralized.

Who invented Steemit? Dan Larimer. Maybe he will be the next Steve Jobs. Actually, I think there are a lot of great names in this game who could be the next Steve Jobs. For example, Vitalik Buterin, Charlie Lee, Charles Hoskinson, and of course, Satoshi Nakamoto. For this blog, I want to write about Mr. Larimer.

To start, if you are looking to invest in a company or one of these crypto assets, it is important to study the team. If the team is experienced, diligent, and honest, that is good. Warren Buffet—who doesn't believe or understand Bitcoin... but anyways—says, "you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you."

For this reason, I am invested in Steem and EOS. I think Dan Larimer is a genius. To start, he started three projects using the blockchain: BitShares, Steemit, and EOS. Some argue these projects are in jeopardy because Dan leaves them to start a new one. However, these are decentralized. Sure they need a team to continue and improve operations, but Dan got them going and they have been successful. Next June, EOS will start, and we will see how it goes, but it is promising. In fact, just recently in the Weiss Cryptocurrency ratings, EOS received the highest score with a 'B'. Not bad—comparatively speaking.

But, I digressed, back to Dan. Will he be the next Steve Jobs? Not necessarily, but he could become a household name. He is a genius who has been involved with cryptocurrencies since the early days. In fact, just recently Charles Hoskinson noted how Satoshi Nakamoto snapped at Dan during one of their interactions. What is interesting about that interaction is that Dan was questioning Satoshi about the scalability and transaction fees of Bitcoin. This is interesting when you look at it today because that is the problem Bitcoin is having right now, transaction fees. Dan wrote: "I am convinced that bandwidth, disk space, and computation time necessary to distribute and 'finalize' a transaction will be prohibitively expensive for micro-payments." Satoshi did get a bit agitated at this.

Nonetheless, he has been cognizant and working on the scalability issues since the early days. Maybe EOS will be the solution. I hope so. I know Charles Hoskinson and Dan Larimer have their differences, but they are both great men who can potentially change the world for the better.