Hello World Steemit

Let's start the experiment. A few more weeks or... days before our identical twins will see the light and is born. I am Jurjen de Vries, proud father in the making of baby A and baby B. This is how the nurses in the children hospital are calling them now. My girlfriend and I already do know the names, but we will let it be a surprise for you. Of course, you may always do a guess ;-)

You say what? YES, an Experiment. Because blockchain based tools are not that old and I didn't saw other identical twins on platforms such as Steemit, PiggyCoin, Identifi, you name it. I like to find out and share with you what we are exploring during this experiment. For those of you who are not familiar with the blockchain, I suggest to watch the video 'The Blockchain explained' by enthousiast such as @lykle-de-vries

Online Blockchain Identity

Did you know that 1.3 million kids have identity stolen annually, 50% under 6-years-old?! When the children are born, here in The Netherlands where I life the parents should go to the town hall for identifying the babies. It's by law, so I will do that. But what are the options today by blockchain based solutions? It's not official yet, but hey, what is official ;-) If my girlfriend, myself, near friends & family recognize them and put that in the blockchain, it can be trusted as well and maybe even more then the official ways.

I investigated the identify blockchain possibilities and found out about a few services.

"We want a reputation system better than Google search, which doesn’t give an accurate picture of anyone and can be manipulated to one direction or another with search engine optimization." - Martti Malmi @ Medium.com 'Learning to Trust Strangers'

• Bitnation. The twins will become an World Citizen through time-stamping their identities at Bitnation. While it is asking for witness, there is no verification on that yet. There are also no links to the witness identities and their contact information, so I guess it will be hard to really identify them this way.
• Identifi. This is an address book that stores its data in a distributed fashion on the computers of its users founded by Martti Malmi. In addition to keeping the contact details of the twins such as their bitcoin address up-to-date you Steemers and other persons can give other trust ratings and feedback. Currently it's in alpha development.
• Keybase.io. Keybase in layman's terms is that it is a solution to represent an identity as a series of statements. Those might say… “This Twitter account is mine.” or "This device (phone/computer/tablet) is mine.”. I will create an identity for them there.
• Namecoin. With the .bit domain extension, the twins will have their own domain names in the blockchain. It will be interesting to see if those .bit domains can be verified in one of the services above. To reach it, you should install a browser extension or do more technical stuff.

A couple of challenges are that identical twins are almost looking the same and that babies are not able to control a computer device by themselves. The fingerprints are different, and even DNA is, but those days technology still can't make a difference in looking up the DNA. Only dogs can. I will keep you posted about those services and challenges. 

Saving

Research in The Netherlands by Intomart GFK said that 90% of the parents save money for their children. On average there saved 45 euro per month (50$ / 0.08BTC / 63 steem. September 4th 2016). This may be for studying, a house or driving license. Since I am thinking we will have self driving cars and 3D printed houses in 18 years, the saving will be for something else. And because in my opinion monetary capital get less value in time because of abundance created due technology, it shouldn't be only about saving money, but also saving other values such as reputation. 

There is where Steem Power comes in mind, because it is not only looking to monetary value but also to create an ecosystem for the platform. In a long term I can teach the twins about saving for other values as well. So value created with posts about the twins on Steemit will be saved for them.

To save money for the twins as well, I am going to invest in decentralised economy funds. ICONOMI is the first player that make it possible for everyone to do an early stage investment in disruptive change makers. ICONOMI believes that the second group of cryptocurrencies, or better “app tokens” will, with the help of smart contracts, replace the traditional type of services. Growing interest in such assets may be promising something big, perhaps a revolution similar to the one the Internet provided in the early 90s. At that point, there wasn’t an option to invest in a service such as the Internet. Now they believe there is and the best way to achieve it is to diversify assets via an investment vehicle such as a fund. - Source 'Whitepaper on App Token Funds'.

Photography

Doesn't the identical twins are looking cute inside the belly? The first photographs have been made by the sonographer in the children hospital. We expect the twins this month and loved to photograph them by our professional Canon EOS 70D and quick ones by our Google Nexus smartphones. Instagram is hot, but it isn't in the blockchain. But where to store the pictures to show them on Steemit? Steemit is blockchain based, but isn't hosting the files. Anyone has a clue if there is an image hosting service which is using decentralized file storage services such as Storj or Swarm? If so, please leave a comment. Of course if I don't find a blockchain based file storage I will start by sharing photos such as above from SLiMG.

What else?

Do you have other blockchain systems for identity or value saving in mind? Please leave a comment.