Interview: Philip Lima Founder of CoExistCoin

Bitcoin Dood: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. For many of my readers you need no introduction, I believe this is your second or third time being interviewed by The Dood. For the new readers could you please tell everyone who you and your relationship to CoExistCoin?

Philip Lima: Hey Hey. Thanks for having me back. It’s always great chatting with The Dood. For those that don’t know me, I am Philip Lima, founder of CoExistCoin. Back in October of 2012, there was a destructive hurricane that wreaked havoc where I live on Long Island, N.Y. It took years to rebuild many towns that are by the water even though there were millions upon millions of dollars donated to help people in need to get their lives back together. March of 2014, I was doing work for an old customer at his location. I couldn’t believe 17 months after this storm, the area was still in bad shape. I asked how come nothing was done with all the money people donated. Where did all this money go to if not to help people rebuild homes and local shops? He gave me a look and said “Phil. Those charity organizations are full of crooks. No one really knows where that money is going. Good honest orgs at best give 25% of what’s donated to where and what they intend to” I was shocked and furious. I thought of the donation my wife and I gave with the intention of helping our neighbors. Now at this time I was already aware of bitcoin and litecoin. And dark coin was just being released (who later changed to DASH). I was researching blockchain technology realizing this was going to change the way the world does digital transactions. That is when I got the vision of creating a cryptocurrency with the intention to help the less fortunate.

BitcoinDood: I've always thought CoExistCoin was an interesting, well intentioned project. Can you tell the readers a little about CoExistCoin and what you hope to achieve with this coin?

Philip Lima: When creating CoExistCoin I had multiple things that I wanted to accomplish. One was to create a system in which people can see if charity organizations are abusing donated funds. We know with using cryptocurrency we can follow funds wallet to wallet using a block explorer. The block explorer that we currently use have so many functions, you really can envision an in depth accounting program. Using Blockchain tech those accounting numbers cannot be changed or compromised. It’s there for all to see. Another issue that I still to this day is getting donations. It is very hard for a lot of people to donate money, even if they wanted to. What if we had a payment system much like PayPal, but fueled by blockchain currency and those transfer fees goes to charity. PayPal charges around 3 bucks to make a transaction. Credit cards charge businesses transaction fees. Imagine a worldwide payment system where the fees are used to help humanity instead of going to greedy corporations and bankers. This is my life goal. To create a charity organization and a financial instrument to help change the world.

BitcoinDood: You guys are currently going through a coinswap and are moving to the Waves Platform. What was your main reason for switching over to the new Waves platform?

Philip Lima: Multiple reasons made this decision easy for me. It is hard and costly to have a cryptocurrency on multiple operating systems. Large scale it is even harder with our old source code. CoExistCoin was struggling to have this available to all. Only windows and Linux users had access to COXST. New users were frustrated with updating nodes and waiting anywhere from 6 hours to a full day to completely download the full blockchain. We had an app on google play. It took 2 full charges on my google tablet to download the blockchain and after that it was clunky. The IPhone app was not available and iOS wallets were very costly to run and maintain. Another factor I had to consider was the responsibility I had to investors. Our old source was a POW/POS system. X11 algo has become very easy to mine. Daily mining rewards were being dumped in the markets drowning our value. No one was happy with this and interest was dwindling. No one is interested in losing money. I was considering either going to go through the grueling process of trying to get investors and coders to rewrite a better source algorithm or maybe give up on my dream. Shortly thereafter I was approached to consider on moving our blockchain over to the WAVES platform. This move I realized after much research cured the problems that I was having. WAVES creator and CEO said he wanted a charity foundation on his platform. “A” as in one. This move was offered with no cost to us. My prayers were answered. I don’t know if you believe in fate Dood?4But I know I was meant to make this project a reality after this opportunity was offered to us. It’s like the universe wants us to succeed to help humanity.

BitcoinDood: For anyone that may not be familiar with it, could you tell us a little about Waves Platform, what it is and how it works?

Philip Lima: WAVES is a decentralized blockchain platform. It uses a lite client wallet where one does not have to download the blockchain. Most of us know the rigors of that. The network handles up to 1,000s of transactions per second that can be paid in CoExistCoin, Waves, BTC, USD and EUR. The platform has many other tokens and fully license and compliant gateways with many more to come. WAVES platform also includes a true peer to peer decentralized Exchange. WAVES plans to have non turing complete Smart contracts by the 4th quarter of 2017.

BitcoinDood: Does this add any new features to CoExistCoin? How does the new platform benefit CoExistCoin users?

Philip Lima: The very first thing is that it is available to use on all iPhone and android apps as well as all other operating systems. The wallet is hassle free and easy to use. CoExistCoin original code was a mixed POW/POS X11 algorithm. The entire blockchain had to be downloaded by the user. A huge issue that we found is that after many POS payments the wallet would slow to a crawl. Each POS payment was sent to a new address within the wallet. Combining any wallets would cause the wallet to seize up because each block could only hold 900KB. Waves alleviates all these problems. Any updates WAVES makes, we also get the update. So when the smart contracts are available on WAVES, it is available to CoExistCoin. One can see how this was a no brainer move for us. With all the future integrations that is in the works, I am very excited for our future. I struggled and worried so much trying to keep up with the tech, that I had no time to get to what the real purpose of CoExistCoin was created for, to help and empower those in desperate need of everyday survival.

BitcoinDood: The coinswap has been going on for awhile now. I guess users can swap directly from their Waves Platform wallet or they could do a manual exchange. What has it been like working with the new platform? If someone asked you if switching over to the platform was worth it, what would you tell them at this stage of the game? Has it been a fairly decent experience?

Philip Lima: The swap began on June 27th. A developer of WAVESGO set up the migration service on their site. If you have COXST in a QT wallet (windows and Linux) you can use the form to automatically exchange old COXST for new COXST that shows up right in your WAVES wallet. I set up a manual exchange page and doing swaps for those that have COXST on exchanges. There are some cases of people having stuck wallets, like iOS wallets or just weird things. They can send the wallet.dat file to me and then I auto swap it for them.

Working with the people at WAVES has been better than expected. They are great people that help with whatever is needed. Their community is big and dedicated in making WAVES and everything associated with it succeed. Using the WAVES platform has been easy and care free. Switching over to the WAVES platform has been worth it. There is small percentage of people that do not like change or they are not computer savvy at all. CoExistCoin brought new people in the crypto world. Their intention was to help people. Not learn how to use a QT wallet. Swapping over has been so easy with almost no issues. Issues that were reported ended up being user error or one simply had to delete cookies and cache in their browser to use the auto migration service. I’ve had no negative complaints about COXST in the WAVES wallet. The only people that stand to lose anything are the miners dumping COXST onto exchanges.

BitcoinDood: How long do users have to swap their coins to the new platform and where can they get the info to do it? (feel free to post any links you want relating to instructions, wallets)

Philip Lima: The swap ends on 7/14/2017. After that I will send all swapped old COXST to a burn address. I have had confirmation from 2 of 3 exchanges that they will delist the old CoExistCoin, helping kill that blockchain. You can find info for swap at www.CoExistCoin.com.html or if you have COXST in a synced QT wallet you can go directly to http://www.wavesgo.com/CoExistSwap.html

BitcoinDood: Well, exciting times indeed. I just wanted to touch base with you real quick and see how things were going. Do you have anything you want to add about the new coin, or the Waves Platform that hasn't been covered in the interview?

Philip Lima: Yes. I would like to add that with this migration it is easier now to accept donations and keep track of what the foundation is doing, as is one of our goals. That is to be fully transparent. Anyone can deposit usd, euro or btc right into one’s own wallet, and then send it to the foundations wallet. There anyone can watch these funds through the block explorer.

WAVES platform is dedicated to being compliant and legit in the financial world. This is so very important to us. Last week the WAVES CEO visited and signed a memorandum strategic partnership with Deloitte. Deloitte provides international audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, tax and other services to select clients. I believe WAVES will lead the future of cryptocurrency and I am so happy to be a part of it all.

BitcoinDood: What type of rolls do you think these new token platforms will play in the future evolution of cryptocurrency?

Philip Lima: These tokens platforms ultimately will add on and off gateways for centralized fiat to enter a decentralized world where the individual is their own bank and unshackled by anything but the free market. With CoExistCoin if you want to help provide clean drinking water to a tribe in Africa, buy a well and the person installing it is paid a world away in 2-3 minutes. That well can essentially begin being installed tomorrow, without passing through two or three banking systems, various regulatory agencies and bureaucracies all taking their part, for 10% of the money to arrive 6 months later to the people in need.

BitcoinDood: As always, I have to end each interview with the same last question. Where do you see cryptocurrency heading in the future?

Philip Lima: Cryptocurrency is going to be the real democratic vote of the future. Do we all take back the right to decentralize our finances, or do we keep abiding by the rules of multibillion dollar banking and finance corporations that are owned by private central banks? The future is ours. Are we autonomous citizens or are we owned by the decisions of generations past?

Thanks so much to Philip Lima for taking the time to answer The Dood's questions and share his story. If you're interested in finding out more about CoExistCoin you can check all the links below.

http://coexistcoin.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/coexistcoin/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1083647.0
https://twitter.com/CoexistCoin
https://wavesplatform.com/

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