Meet Our Steem Witness With @themarkymark. Episode 14

• Welcome to meet our steemit interview and thanks for the honor.

How did you first hear about steemit and what made you decide to join?

I believe I heard about it on a Ethereum Mining Discord, a friend mentioned it and since then I have been active daily.

For steemians who don’t know much about witnesses, can you give a layman explanation of what it is that witnesses do?

Witnesses are responsible for maintaining the security of the STEEM blockchain and producing blocks. If there was only one block producer on the blockchain it would be easy to forge blocks. By having multiple trusted witnesses, there is security block production is being done without malicious intent.

We are also responsible for maintaining a price feed to assist internal systems.

We have some influence on the SBD peg, we have the tools to bring it up to $1 if it falls below, but not as much control when it goes above $1.

Being a witness takes a lot of time and energy, how do you keep a balance between this and other commitments?

I devote a large portion of my time on STEEM these days. I own a company that is 99% automated so I have very few work related commitments.

What is one thing that most people don’t know about you?

I am the admin for four full nodes on the STEEM blockchain, maintain 3 witness servers and provide help for four other ones.

What makes you from different witnesses in the steemit community?

I am active, present, and passionate. This seems simple but many high witnesses are no longer involved in STEEM much less participate or care.

What is the day to day activities you do as a witness?

A large portion of my time is spent researching and identifying spammers, plagiarists, and bad actors. I maintain a very large blacklist where I personally research and verify each user added. It currently has 2,959 users and can be found on Github

Do you have any project at hand now or you already have one?

I have a few projects I am involved with:
* BuildAWhale Blacklist
* Global Blacklist
* BuildAWhale
* BuildAWhale Curation Digest
* STEEM Full Nodes Administration
* SteemUSA Community
* OPGaming Community
* Witness Portal
* STEEM Dashboard

I also spend a lot of time forwarding information to SteemCleaners, helping other witnesses, and hanging out in STEEM communities.

Apart from being a witness what other thing do you do?

I spend a lot of time writing tutorials for various hard to understand topics on STEEM that are frequently misunderstood and not explained well. Many of my six month old posts are still commented on today.

• How curation rewards work and how to be a kick ass curator
• Markdown 101 - How to make kick ass posts on Steemit
• How to change your recovery account
• How to calculate post rewards
• STEEM, STEEM Power, Vests, and Steem Dollars. wtf is this shit?
• The truth and lies about 25% curation, why what you know is FAKE NEWS

I also spend a lot of time identifying bad actors on the STEEM blockchain and programming utilities to automate processes.

What is the biggest challenge you have ever faced since you joined steemit?

Breaking through the noise and being taken seriously.

What is the biggest challenge the steemit community must overcome before it goes widespread?

Punish bad actors quickly and effectively. Currently it is really easy to spam and plagiarize on Steemit and that is being taken advantage of at an alarming rate. There is not enough STEEM or man power devoted to punishing this behaviour so it continues to grow.

I know that you are always busy with your computer trying to help the community, apart from that, what are the other things you enjoy doing?

• Gaming with my son
• Movies
• Photography
• Maker (DIY Electronics)
• 3D Printing
• Pool Parties

Where do you see the value of steem in the next 4-5 years along with the platform?

It's hard to say, I firmly believe no one has a clue where anything will be in 4-5 years much less 4-5 days in terms of price. There are no experts in crypto, only people who tend to do better than the average.

I would love to see STEEM at $10-$25 or more, and the STEEM community larger than Reddit. I think we have a ton of work to do to get there and will require a lot of changes.

Besides being invested in steem, what other crypto currencies do you fancy?

I believe Ethereum will make a big movement by the end of 2018 or early 2019. Although it needs to solve the scaling problem (like most tokens) there are a lot of major players getting involved with it.

I also like watching Litecoin underdog it's way up.

I have a few others but I am not a fan of trying to shill coins so I will keep them to myself.

Some people have called crypto currency the internet 2.0 while other think it is just a hiccup in evolution, what are your thoughts on the future of crypto?

I think Internet 2.0 happened a long time ago. But for crypto, I think you have two things going on.

First you have financial resources which is what makes crypto so popular. It really really boils down to gambling at times. It's the wild west right now and many will win big and lose big. It will eventually settle down to be a bit less volatile but I think it will remain the same just fewer people willing to spin the wheel.

Second is the technology, I believe there are a lot of amazing uses for blockchain technology. I see a future where many services we use today will be backed by a blockchain from content distribution, gaming, municipal services, and commercial services. The gaming of wealth is overshadowing the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

What will be the implications of government having a say in cryptocurrency world?

They will continue to fight it, and will make things very difficult. It is becoming harder and harder to be involved in crypto in the United States and I think it will just get harder.

I fear for the future of crypto in a world where the government is so overpowering and corrupt.

Just handling taxes for crypto will make anyone lose their mind.

If you could only vote for one witness (not yourself) who would it be and why?

Now that's a loaded question. I would say @jesta, as he knows his shit and has always been helpful when I needed it. If I could pick two, I would add in @gtg as well for similar reasons.

In five sentences or less, tell steemians why you deserve their vote.

I am active, passionate, present, and knowledgable about STEEM. My goal from day one has been to make STEEM better than when I got here. I am very approachable, and spend a lot of my time adding value. I give a shit where STEEM is in 5 years and haven't given up.
If you could have a privilege to change something about steemit, what would it be?

Like everyone else, the amount of STEEM Power in my wallet.

Besides that, I firmly believe the ability to punish bad actors with impunity is a big factor in how far STEEM goes. The fact it is so easy to game and is being done at an alarming rate is going to impact other people taking STEEM seriously.

If you have the privilege to travel around the world, where would be the first place you will travel to?

Bermuda Triangle.

It is so awesome finally having a chat with you @themarkymark(Malcolm Reynolds)
Thanks so much for creating time for meet our steemit witness. Have a wonderful day.

Thank you.

PROMOTING AND INTERVIEWING STEEM WITNESS IS ALL I DO

As steemit users we need to do everything in our power to choose witnesses that will represent the community well. Before voting make sure you do some research on the people you are voting for and be informed. Head over to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click on some of the witnesses names, get to know them a bit better and do your part to make sure this community thrives.

Now that you have read something about @themarkymark I strongly recommend you to choose @themarkymark as a witness. For now if you want to select it then open it [https://steemit.com/~witnesses]

^{please vote @themarkymark to be your witness today!}

^{If you appreciate and value what I do, please consider supporting me by Upvoting, Sharing and Reblogging and kindly follow for more content to come !}

Thanks for reading. Till next time

You can check and read my previous interview with
reggaemuffin • exyle• adsactly-witness • felixxx • lukestokes • neoxian • abh12345 • good-karma
•liondani
• aggroed • yuriks2000 • jatinhota and you can make sure you follow along with the next episode.

Help a soul today so that the world will be a better place for you and for me.

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I remain my humble self @dhavey

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VOTE @themarkymark @jatinhota @yuriks2000 @liondani @aggroed @good-karma @abh12345 @neoxian @lukestokes.mhth @blockbrothers @adsactly-witness @timcliff @drakos @roelandp @reggaemuffin @felixxx @steemgigs as witness.

Thanks to @official-hord for the badge

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