Hello, I'm herzmeister from Germany

Hello folks,

I'm herzmeister from Germany, a long time community member in the Bitcoin and crypto-currency space, checking out this steemit thing.

I've never actually seen or photographed myself an aurora borealis, I just find it beautiful because I think it well represents a certain meditative zen-state of the mind.

• herzmeister on bitcointalk
• herzmeister on reddit
• herzmeister on stackoverflow
• herzmeister on diaspora
• herzmeister on twitter

I've been using this nickname on the web since 2006, when the German football team didn't quite win the cup on their own soil and were dubbed "Weltmeister der Herzen", so I shuffled that around a bit into a "herzmeister der welten".

Since childhood I've been enthusiastic about computers and programming, as well as music. I learned programming with BASIC on an 8-bit Amstrad CPC and created programs like an address administration, a few little games.

As a 20-something I was playing in a semi-professional metal band, and we even toured a bit around Europe. As a 30-something I was a full-stack developer, mainly using C# and .NET as well as Javascript, building tools, service modules and applications from the back-end to the front-end and back again for some nameable customers.

Eventually I discovered Bitcoin, and like many of you it left me rather restless until today.

All this crypto stuff also lead me down a rabbit hole and made me realize how important security and privacy is, not only to protect oneself, but also in the bigger societal context of free speech and free self-expression. I guess most people here understand that only free-and-open-source software can be audited, but we still have a big problem with the black boxes that is the hardware we use on a daily basis, for which I see no easy solution today.

Another big challenge is to re-decentralize the web and the internet again. The next generation of the internet should run on a layer that abstracts content and services away from location, i.e. we need a standardized way to address content and services directly by their identifiers (or names), without having to specify a server or IP address. Projects like IPFS, MaidSafe and similar ones are steps in this direction. To make them competitive they need to achieve a certain momentum and achieve synergistic effects that the old walled gardens cannot and will never achieve. I'm currently researching how to contribute or build something in this area.

I also host the Bitcoin meetup in Munich, Germany, so you're always welcome to drop by and say hello. :)

Cheers,
Michael (my real name)