Source of background: pixabay.

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Hi Steemians, for me "challenges" normally are these things were only others take part an win - but let me make an exception and join this current one. :)
Here are the answers to the questions of @steemingcurators:

How did your blockchain career actually begin? How did you find out about STEEM(it)?

I am not a really 'early bird' and bought my first five bitcoins from a friend in 2015. I transferred him the money and he sent me the bitcoins into my Electrum Wallet.

I got aware of STEEM in 2016. One of my habits is reading the German BitcoinBlog, and there I found this exact article about STEEM.

A few days after reading this article I signed up ... and then had to wait until September 2016 to get my account approved. It lasted another few weeks until I found the time to publish my introduction post.

Why did you join STEEM(it)?

The main reason was curiosity.
I always like to explore new things.
I knew how successful social networks like facebook are nowadays, and assumed it could be a very promising mix to combine that with advanced blockchain technology and the opportunity for normal users to earn a crypto currency - for doing what they like to do anyway: writing posts.
Why shouldn't these people benefit who build the value of a social media platform by creating content?

As I wrote in my introduction post I felt the fascinating potential offered by blockchain technology and crypto currencies to change the world: money which doesn't know any borders, which can be transferred very fast from one end of the world to the other without any conversion costs and which is not created and controlled by states and banks.

What was your first experience?

It was amazing to see other users upvoting my content and to start earning crypto currencies just by writing. These early days the rare upvotes of the mighty @ned and other whales felt really special for a newbie like me. ;-) (I hope now it's you who feels the same when I grant you my gigantic upvotes, haha.)
I got to know many fascinating and freedom-loving people all over the world, and so far joined two SteemFests. I am also aware of the split of the community, but as it unfortunately happend, now I wish the best for everybody whichsoever way he chose ...

Here you can read somewhat more what STEEM meant to me and why I am still here.

What was your knowledge of blockchain? Are you interested in that?

Over the years I got quite some knowledge by reading, but so far I lack practical experience and never built any blockchain application myself. Maybe if in future the value of crypto currencies might rise in a way that I wouldn't need to do any additional work at all anymore, I would dive deeper into the matter and try to get some practice concerning developing of blockchain apps.

Did you invite friends? Is your family here?

My wife, @kobold-djawa, is using STEEM since a long time, and I hope that our little daughter, @steem-queen, will resume this tradition in future.

I already brought quite some friends to STEEM and plan to convince more and more people of using blockchain based social media platforms. Since the implementation of resource credits I started creating accounts directly for interested new users and hope to increase these activities in future.