For an introduction:
- An excerpt from Nathaniel Popper's "Digital Gold"
An introductory blog post I wrote to a company blog in 2013
In late 2009 I made the first BTC <-> USD transaction with NewLibertyStandard to help him get started with his Bitcoin exchange. I sold 5,050 BTC for 5.05 USD on PayPal. I ran my own bitcoinexchange.com for a little while, exchanging BTC for SEPA bank payments. In 2011, I helped Jed McCaleb and later Mark Karpeles with their banking in Europe.
I gradually withdrew from the Bitcoin community. I found the atmosphere less inspiring and exciting than in the early days, when none of Bitcoin's potential had realized yet. On the other hand, by then Bitcoin already had lots of skilled coders who would keep it running, whereas some other projects didn't.
In 2013 I started working on the identity & reputation project Identifi (interview). Currently, I'm a co-founder at the startup MONI, with which I'm hoping to advance Identifi and distributed payment networks such as Stellar.
Thanks for having me, looking forward to answering your questions!
-Martti Malmi (sirius)