Luke Stokes built his first website 22 years ago. Back then, AOL was "all the rage."

Fast-forward two decades, and he is still living and breathing technology.

Since early 2013, Luke has been searching for the "killer app" that will ignite cryptocurrency mass adoption. In 2016, his gut told him Steemit had the potential to be that gateway drug. He's been an active and well-respected Steemian ever since.

Today, the long-time technologist and blogger talks about family, entrepreneurship and faith, while adding a few bold cryptocurrency predictions.

At the end of the day, Luke's mantra is simple: He wants to help create a world we all want to live in.

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20 questions with @lukestokes

1 - How would you describe yourself in one sentence?

@lukestokes - I'm a father, husband, technologist, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in.

2 - For those who aren't familiar with Foxy, what is it?

@lukestokes - Foxy.io is a platform for enabling merchants to add custom ecommerce to their existing websites and projects. We just do the cart, checkout, and receipt instead of trying to do everything, but that still includes recurring payments, downloadables, shipping, taxes, coupons, discounts, single sign on, and more. I was inspired to build this when my friend @brettflorio kept complaining over and over again about every shopping cart software he'd ever used. He really knew them all. Every time I'd recommend one to him, he'd already know everything about it and why it wouldn't meet the needs of his clients. Finally, I told him I could probably build one "over a weekend" because I had built shopping carts before and didn't think it would be that difficult. We launched in 2007, and I've been working on it ever since. :)

The main inspiration was to help solve a problem my friend had. I worked on it for four years straight late into the night and on the weekends while maintaining my full-time job before I finally went full-time in 2011. If you want to learn more about that, you can check out this keynote presentation I gave in 2014.

3 - At what age did you discover your fascination with technology?

@lukestokes - Funny enough, I didn't get my first computer until almost the end of high school even though my dad worked from home with computers designing databases. Around 1996 I started building websites for my friends who had AOL accounts (all the rage back then) because I learned each account had some web storage space where I could make pages for them. I had so much fun learning HTML and JavaScript back then. The act of pure creation was addicting, and I was hooked.

4 - You built your first website in 1996. How would you compare the early days of the Internet to the early days of Blockchain?

@lukestokes - I see a lot of similarities. Lots of hype. I was in college during the dot com bubble, and I had one company I was working for that didn't want me to go back to school but wanted me to quit and keep working for them. Things were so crazy and money was being thrown around all over. Sites were clunky, difficult to use, and even in some ways kind of silly. Lots of gif animations and JavaScript tricks with a "guestbook" being the coolest thing I built at the time (at least it was database driven).

The hype around ICOs and blockchain projects that aren't really disrupting anything does remind me of the hype I saw back then. I think we'll have plenty of failures like pets.com but we'll also have the Googles and Amazons. In many ways, I don't think the bubble has even inflated yet. Cost-adjusted, we could see many more trillions of dollars flowing into the cryptocurrency space before we see a serious correction and at that point we'll know who the real, value-providing projects are. My money's on DPOS / Graphene projects like BitShares, STEEM, and EOS.

5 - How did you first hear about Steemit and what was your initial impression?

@lukestokes - I first learned about Steemit via my friends @sean-king and @billbutler. I think they told me about it at the same time (June 2016), and I remember I was camping so I created the account and didn't come back to it and post until July. I was really excited about the potential because I had been looking for the killer app for cryptocurrency mass adoption ever since I got involved in bitcoin in the beginning of 2013. I thought this might be it because everyone understands social media already.

6 - In your opinion, what is the best thing about Steemit?

@lukestokes - It's hard for me to come up with favorites, so if you'll allow it, I'd say relationships, reputation, and rewards. They all go hand-in-hand to challenge people's perceptions of what's possible in terms of community and where financial value itself really comes from. I love it. :)

7 - In your opinion, what is the worst thing about Steemit?

@lukestokes - There are quite a few challenges, and they impact different people in different ways. I'll give my personal view which may be much different for others, but I think the worst thing about Steemit right now is how it confuses people as the main project of the STEEM blockchain and the Steemit company. As I've said before, STEEM is so much more than just Steemit and so when people see certain missing features from Steemit like notifications and direct messaging and community groups, they think the whole project is not being taken seriously. From my perspective, the main project is the STEEM blockchain, and Steemit is just an example of what's possible and what we'll hopefully see a lot more of when Smart Media Tokens launch this year.

8 - After attending SteemFest 2, what would you say to someone who is on the fence about attending his/her first SteemFest in 2018?

@lukestokes - If you've built real, meaningful relationships on Steemit, then you have to try and make it out there. It's like a family reunion. The conversations, the relationships, the interactions and sharing of ideas and life in person gives a whole new and important dimension to the social aspect of Steemit. The entire event is so top-notch that you feel like you're part of something really special because you are.

9 - If the author rewards disappeared, would you still write blog posts on Steemit?

@lukestokes - Yes, I definitely would. I can say that for sure, because I ran an experiment to test myself by hiding the $$$. I don't think I'd write as much, but I've been blogging for over 13 years already and before Steemit, I didn't get paid for any of it. I like putting my thoughts out there and having dialogues about them, so that part wouldn't change.

10 - How many active Steemit users do you predict there will be on Jan. 1, 2019?

@lukestokes - Great question. If we're going with active users, I'll put my random guess at 600,000 (that would be a 10x+ increase from where we are today). I'd like to see it much higher than that, and I certainly think it's possible, but there's a lot of work to be done for scaling between now and then.

11 - Two years ago, you wrote about your religious upbringing–and your quest to discover truth–in Losing Eternity. How has your evolution of beliefs affected the relationships in your life that were established during the years you served in Christian ministry?

@lukestokes - That's a great question. One of the hardest parts about changing my world-view was leaving a group of business owners and friends I used to meet with for an hour and a half every Wednesday morning. In many ways, that group is defined by a shared belief and when I started to question that belief, I could no longer remain in the group. I'm still closely connected to some there, but many other relationships have drifted away. Some of the people I used to work with in ministry have reached out to me, and we've had very interesting discussions over email or in post comments over the past couple of years, but things aren't the same. I've realized some people are completely comfortable having deep, meaningful relationships with those they have some fundamental disagreements with regarding religious belief and others are not so comfortable. I also realized that some relationships just get stuck, and we'd go in circles where they would bring me their evidence for their beliefs and having researched them in great detail myself, I would just explain how they didn't hold up for me. That caused tension for them that was really uncomfortable and for a while I decided it was better just to pull back and only stay engaged with those who wanted to be connected. It was a hard time and in some ways still is because my wife @corinnestokes (who I met while working in ministry) still holds to her beliefs, even though mine have changed. If anything, the strength of our relationship (to me) is evidence that we can all get along, if we really want to.

12 - You've shared several stories about your family. In a sentence, what does your family mean to you?

@lukestokes - Family is the meaning of life, when thinking in terms of genetics, and my family is literally the most amazing thing I've ever created or been a part of.

13 - If you had to make three bold cryptocurrency predictions for 2018, what would they be?

@lukestokes - Oh, man... Hmm. Well, I guess I'll just go with coins that I hold and want to see do really well. I think it's possible we could see BitShares and SmartCash go to many dollars each, EOS shoot up like crazy to overtake Ethereum in marketcap as businesses who need enterprise scalability move to it, and STEEM over $20 as SMTs launch and more major brands buy in to purchase influence.

Those are mostly wishful thinking predictions, but I'll be checking back at the end of the year anyway to see how I did. :)

14 - On average, how many hours per week do you spend consuming content on Steemit?

@lukestokes - I don't know that I've ever kept track. If I go with a few hours a day (that may be conservative? I'm not really sure) then that would put me at over 20 hours a week. Some weeks I'm focusing on content, others I'm just trying to get through comments on my own posts. Sometimes I get into seasons where I barely get around to reading the amazing content of the people I follow, much less seek out new authors. It's getting interesting putting it all in balance. I also spend a lot of time reading chat content to stay up-to-speed with various witness responsibilities.

15 - Where is your favorite place to surf?

@lukestokes - I really enjoyed surfing Playa Grande in Costa Rica. I grew up surfing in Huntington Beach, CA so you could call that my home break, but I always enjoyed surfing Trestles in San Onofre or going down to K38 in Mexico. I have trouble with favorites. There's too much awesome in the world just to focus on one thing. :)

16 - Do you enjoy public speaking?

@lukestokes - Yes, I do, but I don't really enjoy preparing for a talk. Once I'm up there and doing it, it's great, but I often feel like I didn't do a good enough job creating slides or going through enough test runs. Recently I did an unconference talk and it was great because it was mostly Q&A with the audience about STEEM, Steemit, and Utopian. We didn't need any slides or prep because there's just so much to talk about. The people thanking me afterwards reminded me I should get back into public speaking more.

17 - What is your favorite quote?

@lukestokes - Well, again, it's hard for me to pick favorites, but I've always liked: "You must be the change you want to see in the world," from Gandhi. I also like my old boss' often-repeated phrase, "If you help enough people, you'll never have to worry about money."

18 - On several occasions, you've suggested you want to "help create a world we all want to live in." How far are we from that vision becoming a reality?

@lukestokes - I think we create this reality every single day. Improving the world has a lot of parts to it. It may be small and somewhat unnoticeable at first, but every interaction we have is an input into the system which impacts the thinking of others and changes their actions which then changes the world around them. The world still has plenty of problems for sure, but I think many of them (if not most of them) can be solved by changing our own thinking and using tools like NVC, the non-aggression principle (NAP), and removing the myth of authority from our thinking. I think the future can be amazing and voluntary, and I'm hopeful my kids will live to see it (and hopefully I will too, if life extension technology continues to advance).

19 - You get to have dinner with three people, living or dead. Who are you eating with?

@lukestokes - Elon Musk would be my first choice. I love how passionate he is about using technology to improve the world, tackle big problems, and make us a multi-planetary species. We could talk about Ben Franklin (my second choice) and how we both went to UPENN (I've read and enjoyed both their biographies). The third would either be Sam Harris or maybe Ayn Rand. I love talking to philosophers who make things practical and connect to the real world as Harris has done with neuroscience and morality and Rand did with economics and genuine human motivations.

20 - What is one thing very few people know about you?

@lukestokes - I have two plates and eleven screws in my left arm and I lived on a boat for two years. There I go again, having trouble picking a favorite. :)

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Thanks to the well-respected @lukestokes for a great interview.

As always, thanks to all of you for taking the time to read.

Who would you like to see me throw 20 questions at? Drop me a comment below and I'll work on setting up the interview.

If you like what you read, be sure to follow my blog!

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