We have a very special Q&A with togo a long-time community member and BiblePay supporter. He was gracious to answer enough to answer some questions. Please take a read!
What country are you from? What do you like about your country?
I was born and raised in the United States of America (USA). I really don’t know much about other countries so I can’t really compare. I’m a big fan of our freedom of speech
What are you doing now? What do you do in real-life?
I’ve spent a large portion of my life playing video games, over 20 years, I ended up gravitating to multiplayer sandbox games, I’ve lived in many virtual worlds, I don’t play much anymore, the past couple years I’ve run my own video game servers, I’ve designed and shaped the experience for the players
For money I write computer software, I am a programmer, I think I was drawn to working for BiblePay so that I could take a stab at doing all the non-programmer things that I don’t get to do in my regular job
What was your first introduction to crypto currency or technology?
I remember reading a slashdot article about Mt. Gox exchange being hacked the summer of 2011, it was previously a website for trading Magic the Gathering cards, I got a little interested in Bitcoin but it scared me
It wasn’t until the summer of 2017, I had saved up a chunk of money and was thinking about what to invest in, and I came across an article about Bitcoin price, and I was like woah, this thing is still alive?! and its grown so much in value!
It fit with my values and my beliefs, I had just read a book on Austrian Economics by Thomas Sowell that year and I had just been playing in a political minecraft server, where I came to realize how Libertarian I am, I bought some Bitcoin at around $2,700
How did you find out about BiblePay?
I started learning about altcoins, Bitcoin was cool but there were other coins with different features, different money competing, the whole Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash split was going on at the time too, I’m definitely not a Bitcoin maximalist, I ended up investing into over 30 coins
I wanted to learn how mining worked and I went on a search for a coin I could mine with my CPU in the bitcointalk announcement section, I really liked Rob’s project description, it was unique and you could tell how smart he was, I started mining on one PC, then another, and then another.
What do you like about the BiblePay project?
If the CPU Only mining holds up, I think that is unique, everyone can mine, not just people with lots of money for specialized hardware
The 10% charity, in a world of greed, is also very unique, as BiblePay grows, so does how much we donate to Charity
I think Rob is super unique and he is very experimental, his past work on Gridcoin, the #1 science cryptocurrency, is amazing and he’s been incorporating it into BiblePay
What parts of BiblePay do you participate in?
I wrote the windows and linux mining guides, I created the reddit, discord, and twitter, I pass information around, I combine it, Ill try to make it more understandable, I try to keep information up to date as it changes
I wrote the masternode setup guide, I helped design the website, I’ve advertised BiblePay where I can, I’ve run the longest living block explorer, I’ve helped test in most rounds of testing
I was the second person to create a budget proposal, I’ve created a lot of proposals, almost all of them have passed, I’ve been point of contact for multiple services, I’ve tried my best to be positive with the community, to cheer on Rob and any hard worker I’ve tried my best to support any user in need, I’ve done a lot, some of it hidden, it’s been a crazy journey
I generally have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m willing to jump in, I’m willing to do lots of little things in all different directions, and I think you need someone like that, especially starting out, I’ve tried to be everything I can be other than a blockchain developer
What would you suggest to help BiblePay improve or grow?
Here is an Open TODO list I made for BiblePay. There is a lot on it that we need help with, anyone, even you reading right now, can get rewarded BiblePay coins for helping out! Anyone can create a proposal (for less than a dollar), and request funding for work! Please help out!
What have you learned working with BiblePay?
I’ve learned about mining, how to sync and reindex wallets, how to run multiple wallets, how to test on the testnet chain, I’ve learned a lot of Linux commands, I’ve learned a little bit about a lot of things
Have you invited friends to also use BiblePay? What do they think of it?
I’ve been fairly quiet about BiblePay, none of my friends have or use Bitcoin or any cryptocurrencies, my wife doesn’t believe in it, co-workers have told me to sell and get out before it crashes, bosses have laughed at me, most of the world does not believe in it nor understands it, we are very very early still
Do you want to explain more about what you think is great about cryptocurrency?
I do not like the federal reserve continually printing more money, devaluing everyone’s current savings
I do not like fractional reserve banking
I do not agree with the bailing out of banks and industries, deeming them “too big to fail”
Robert Kiyosaki says “Savers Are Losers”,
given the way things are setup, he’s not wrong, he’s just playing the game as it is,
but I support a deflationary currency that no government can stop or interfere with and that they cannot print more of,
Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million coins
BiblePay has a maximum supply of 5.2 billion coins
no more will ever be created!
I recommend reading the “The Internet of Money” by Andreas Antonopolous and “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell
What is your BBP receive address?
I would prefer you hold onto your coins for yourself! They may be worth a lot one day! I try to give away coins to others, to reward their work, if someone has a Bitcoin address and they’re just learning/starting out, just playing with it, I like to send a few dollars of BTC to encourage them.
What are your thoughts on PoDC 2.0?
I’m not really a fan of acronyms, so for everyone reading, PoDC is Proof of Distributed Computing, it’s basically the name for a system in BiblePay where you get rewarded for contributing to actual real science cancer research
Since Rob was the creator of Gridcoin, I think the science research is part of his passion, I also think it has helped agnostics and atheists be drawn to the coin, it’s a nice merge of religion and science, I’m a fan of it and I look forward to it coming back, but I still do think its too complicated to set up for the average person, but I know Rob has a couple improvements to help streamline it more
Worst moments with BiblePay?
Complainers, Negativity, Critics, Power Struggles, Losing people,
Price continually going down and down and down no matter what we do
What was it like mining BiblePay in the early days? Did you rent servers? Do you recall the specs, cost, energy used?
Back then you could get almost 20,000 BBP for solving a block, and I was solving maybe a block a day! I started with just my PC, then my wifes PC
Half a year later with Proof of Distributed Computing, I bought the parts for three Ryzen 7 machines, I also rented multiple 72 core AWS spot instance servers for a couple weeks
Here’s an image of my desktop machines
How do you feel about bugs and mandatory updates?
Lets get it fixed and keep improving the product!
I’ve supported Rob experimenting, I still support it, but it’s definitely taken a toll on a lot of our users, BiblePay is known for continually changing and its caused people to step back because it’s just too much effort to stay up to date, especially combined with the bear market, I hope it all pays off in the end
What was it like doing the video shows with 616westwarmoth?
We would do it all in one take, and there was little preparation on my side, I had my own topic list I would send him but that was it, it was all free form
Why do you believe in BiblePay or DASH? You seem to like the DASH model.
You have to understand, that I came into cryptocurrency during the Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash split, I saw Dash as the solution, a decentralized governance model, a way for investors to vote on the outcome of the coin without having to split the coin and split its user base
Dash has a 2nd tier of nodes called masternodes, they support a governance system to voice opinions and fund initiatives, they also support instantly and privately sending coins
Bitcoin in comparison only funds miners, how do they fund other initiatives? Donators,
but who wants to donate for free? Who wants to donate when no one else is donating?
Dash, with their monthly budget system, is able to fund all sorts of activities
I believe Dash is a superior model, but I believe the beginning accidental instamine that happened has hurt them a lot
I love that BiblePay has used the Dash model (but with no premine, no ICO, no instamine) and added on to it:
– anyone can mine (CPU Only mining),
– 10% of all coins mined are donated to Charity
And as BiblePay grows, more orphans and widows will be supported and helped
Have you considered adopting children? being foster parents? or sponsoring orphans?
I haven’t considered adoption or fostering yet, I recently had my first child and oh man it’s been a lot of work! – In the past I sponsored a child from Peru for a few years, through an organization called Children International, but he got old enough that he moved on from the program https://www.children.org/
What are your future plans?
I want the ability to be mobile, I will probably get a trailer RV soon, but also I would like to settle down, its conflicting, I would love to get my own land and start a food forest, so sort of a homesteading thing, becoming self sufficient.