Blockchain and Money! Huh, Didn’t Sleep for Last 72 Hours

Heard about Bitcoin’s moon run just about 72 hours back and was wondering why a self-proclaimed super smart techy like me is nowhere in the scene. Not an investor by profession, but being a techy I should have understood the potential and invested some money in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether or may be Ripple.
Ok, excused, I am not an investor but a techy, but then why I didn’t build something on blockchain yet! I should have thought of some file sharing service like sotrj.io or a blogging platform like Steemit, or a lottery game, or created my own fork of Ethereum like Ubiq.
Leave it man, at least I should keep track of the next super cool ICO out there and become part of the blockchain game. Even after spending 72 full hours understanding every bit of the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem, I stand nowhere.
But where am I now?
Settling to writing an article here on Steemit, at least to feel that I am now getting involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and blockchain technology in some way. This is not a money-making machine guys, it is just a blog, do it for fun, make connections, is what I have told myself now!
Let us get back to the truth, Money, Money, Money!! Did I miss the bus or there still is some scope?
Before I continue, 2 lines on what I do, I am the owner of the website http://noeticforce.com which I created to make my presence felt in the tech industry, and to make money from it was, off course, part of the plan.
I also do a full-time job, product architect and currently leading a product that facilitates fincancial transactions. They said I need to upgrade this client server piece of sh** to blockchain, else the product is obsolete in another 1-year max. This is what made me read about blockchain, Bitcoin and all this crypto stuff.
The plan on how the software will be upgraded is already in my mind now (72 hours spent) and the proceedings will start on that with my team on coming Monday. But that is not what is keeping me awake for 72 hours, what is keeping me awake is how to make money, at personal level.
Given below is the breakup of 72 hours, breaks (those were very short I must tell you) excluded, 3 hours compulsory long walk excluded.
Started to look at Bitcoin price charts, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month high, 3 months high, 1-year appreciation, and I went back to the day Bitcoin was launched. Looked at many websites that Google threw up on the top, worldcoinindex.com for pricing details etc. Coindesk.com, cointelegraph.com etc. to get the feel of crypto currencies and the related market. This bank tying up with that, banks coming together to do this and that and all that stuff, Bitcoin prices going to the moon, Ether will cross Bitcoin in the long run, Bitcoin will hit $500000 in 5-10 years and what not.
Bitcoin was not the only one, all these articles told me there is Litecoin, Dodgecoin, Neo, Ripple, Ether and many more, so, compulsively, I had to look at the price appreciation that these coins are getting.
By now, Adrenaline had started to follow Bitcoin. Money is what I always wanted to earn and this is what I am missing out man! Anyways, now the question came in why so many currencies out there in the wild.
Bitcoin was understood by now - distributed ledger, immutable, a transaction added is transaction forever, the value of your account is derived by looking at the whole chain of blocks, mining, trading, exchanges and all the stuff. And you know what, this whole ledger, this whole thing is blockchain that you download on to your machine, and this is all. And there are folks who provide interface to connect to the full nodes that they run on their machine, so you do not have to download the whole thing if you just want to get a wallet to store bitcoins and all, and there was lot more to it and I read it all.
Why Ether (and all other coins) when Bitcoin was already there
Now this Ethereum is another blockchain, unlike Bitcoin which is just a distributed ledger, Ethereum goes a step beyond and lets you create piece of code and store it in the blockchain, the smart contract is what they call it. And what, everyone can create their own smart contracts and store on Ethereum, and again this whole thing of everyone remains with everyone else. Then there is logic of gas, when a smart contract (piece of code) is called by a transaction, it uses computation power and consumes gas. Gas translates to Ethers in the end.
And you know what, you can create your own token (token is like a currency) and that token becomes the fuel of your blockchain instead of Ether. Not only that, you can fork the whole Ethereum and start a whole new ecosystem like these guys at xx have done. So, before I continue, this Ethereum is what I have finalized for now to do the POC for the product upgrade.
It took me minimum 10 hours to read the Ethereum documentation and the other stuff that included sample applications built on top of Ethereum, most of which are lottery systems, not my stuff I must say.
But all those applications gave me an idea that it can be used to upgrade may product. How, everything of my current product will not enter the blockchain, only the objects and data that need to be transparent among multiple parties need to get inside, and rest would be managed outside. And there is lot to it, I am yet to get down to the detailed design next week, which I am sure going to attract quite an attention in the organization.
So, is that all? Not really! I am here to make money, so I need to build something at a personal level, ideas are floating in and out of my brain, would it be a new token or a complete fork of Ethereum. Don’t know what it is going to look like. Okay I can park it for now, but I did read all those tutorials around how-to setup Ethereum client, geth, mist, metamask, goland stuff and looked at the code of couple of smart contracts. Didn’t get to setup since it is still downloading on my machine. Anyways, I created an account on Microsoft Azure, which is offering Ethereum blockchain in the cloud.
Realization – Creating something on my own is not a possibility without few more helping hands, parking it for now and will just play around with Ethereum in the days to come.
Making money, someone mentioned why don’t you invest in ICO – Initial coin offerings, this thing looked very attractive to me. So, I landed up on kickico.com that lists its own ICO and many other promising upcoming coin ICOs.
Pretty much settled for ICOs for now, will do my research further and will invest in 2-3 ICOs in equal proportions. BitAir sounds very promising, KICKICO itself sounds very promising too. I would be investing in ICOs in the next week, and keep you all updated on this and my further research. Watch out for more. Cheers!