My name is Marvin and I live in Los Angeles where I was born and raised. I am Systems/Network administrator for a business intelligence research company. I have a fiancee’ SahirahLA beat me to posting an introduction. My hobbies are pretty much crypto, bowling and bike-riding.
I’ve always been curious about how things works. I was the kid who would take apart stuff and sometimes get them back together. Of course my parents knowing this still got me a computer. I was around 11 or 12 years old. It was Commodore 64 and changed my life. I will save that for another post. Suffice it to say it set me on the path I’m on today with computers and technology.
I went to college and got a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I thought I wanted to be an automotive engineer for a car company like my father and uncle did but while in college this thing called the Internet came a long and I knew that I would be doing something computer related. While in college I helped setup and run a computer lab for the campus housing. I remember using the Netscape browser and going to Yahoo (and Tucows for those who really remember) . So after graduating I started working as web designer. This lead to a job with a dotcom startup. There I became the network administrator because after getting hired I realized they didn’t have one. That lasted a good 3 years before blowing up. Didn’t get any stock options, but got some nice trips to Hawaii, Cancun and some decent computer hardware instead of my final paycheck. I will write more on that whole implosion another day too.
After the startup job I wanted something nice and stable so I got a job as a network administrator at an aerospace manufacturing company. A year later 9/11 happened and got “layed off”. I put that in quotes because what actually happened is I become and independent contractor with that company. On Friday I was an employee. I came back Monday as a contractor at same desk, same responsibilities , more pay and no benefits so it worked out. I did that for a few years until they got bought out by a large international company. They began cutting back my hours and so I left for my current position about 5 years ago.
So that’s some of my back story, but I how did I get here? Well back in 2012 I was the Starbucks I like to visit and this older gentlemen asked me about Bitcoin. Most of people there knew I worked in the computer field and I had seen him before. I didn’t know what it was at the time but I told I would check it out and let him know. Somehow I totally missed the whitepaper and downloaded and installed the wallet/miner. I remember it was not easy at least for me. I eventually got it working a let it run for a day or two. I don’t remember how many I mined but it was worth few a pennies and didn't seem worth it. This was with a CPU. So I told the guy when I say him that it doesn’t seem worth but I may be wrong. I may have seen him once or twice after that but never spoke to him.
A few months later I wanted to upgrade my computer’s graphic card. I knew I wanted an AMD card. They must have been popular because they were always sold out. When the next model came out I went to store to buy one. They were still sold out. I remember another guy was there and told me people were buying them to mine Bitcoin because they were better than nvidia. I went home and did a full deep dive into Bitcoin. I realized I was too late to mine so I bought some off Localbitcoins. This was when the price was in around $70. I did mine some litecoin since they were still CPU friendly at the time. I begin trading on sites. Started leverage trading. I had over 50 bitcoins then BOOM! The silk-road bust crashed the Bitcoin price. Lost most of them. Was upset but didn’t worry because the lost in actual dollars was not that bad. So I kept buying and trading the rise to $1000 and then I again lost a bunch making stupid trades. I salvage some of it then invested in some cloud mining. That ended up being a loser too. Another lesson learned.
So by the end of 2013 of started looking at alt coins and bought some and eventually came across Bitshares. I thought it was a good coin and agreed with whole wastefulness of mining. I just missed being able to became a founder but jumped into being angel with AGS and they rest is history.
