Robert Viglione ...ancap finpunk loving the crypto revolution!

Hey there Steemit,
It's always weird trying to write about who are you; most people seem to start out by saying what they do for a living, what they study, or just dive right into a set of hobbies. To some extent all of these things contribute to who we are, and I guess their order follows from what we want to emphasize at the moment. The title of this post sums up a lot of what I wanted to convey to this forum, but here's a bit more about me...

For starters, this is me sailing last weekend...

Persistence paid off and I ended up marrying way out of my league...

As far as the whole career thing goes, I started off as a physicist turned military officer, worked in some high tech stuff like radar systems, satellites, and launch vehicles, did some consulting, pulled a stint doing intel work in Afghanistan, and am now a PhD candidate in Finance doing asset pricing research, innovation from a finance perspective, and even have my first academic paper on cryptofinance:

"Does Governance Have a Role in Pricing: Cross-Country Evidence from Bitcoin Markets"
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2666243

The gist of it is that the usual tools of financial repression, like capital controls, foreign currency controls, and just lack of economic freedom, cause safe haven assets, like Bitcoin, to trade at premiums because...well, those things suck.

And speaking of Bitcoin, here's my buddy and I making what we think is the first ever Bitcoin transaction in Afghanistan in 2013:

If you haven't been able to tell by now, my philosophy on life is that every peaceful person ought to have the right to be left alone. It doesn't get much simpler than that, but people seem to complicate a lot and make up all sorts of names for things. You could call me a libertarian, an ancap, or just someone who doesn't believe in slavery...like, really.

Besides binge reading apocalyptic novels, I like to get out and do some things. I get out into the wilderness and hike quite often:

What wilderness-loving libertarian veteran doesn't like to play with guns?

But they're even more fun with bourbon...

So besides those zombie books and doing the finance thing, I travel a bunch and spend a lot of time learning languages; it's def one of my favorite hobbies and so far I've picked up enough French, German, Spanish, and Italian to have a lot of fun, but not get into too much trouble, in some cool places around the world.

So that's me in a nutshell. Viva la Bitcoin and the decentralized technologies that are giving humanity a chance to peacefully opt out of the old school command-and-control nonsense.