Hi I'm new here. Do you also like...things?

My favourite picture that I think serves as a good ice breaker. :)

Hi there Steemit folks. I'm new here and to be completely honest, it's because I saw very little value in this platform and considered it largely economically unviable. However, I always thought that Steemit, at the very least was a component of a very grand idea; that is decentralizing social media. Today with the increasing politicization of platforms like Facebook and Youtube where we are seeing policies meant to protect us from controversial thought, or thought deemed controversial.

Freedom of speech is a core component to the most functional societies because freedom of speech allows us the freedom of truth, whether that be our own truth or facing the truth of others. That is to say, where we see censorship and silence, whatever the truth really is we're inevitably shielded from it and society never fairs well on a diet of lies and ignorance. In that vein at the very least, I cannot deny the value of platforms like Steemit, and so I've decided to begin utilizing it. I only hope that I can offer some value to the collection of content here.

A bit about me if you're not aware of who I am...the opposite of which I would actually be a little surprised at; My name is Ethan Erkiletian and I've been in the crypto space since 2012. I've hosted Bitcoin talk shows, (including the world's first ever live to air Bitcoin talk show on commercial radio) given lectures on crypto, written lengthy articles on crypto, created educational material and more. All that said, I've kept mostly to the sidelines in recent years as I've watched the whole space make leaps and bounds forward at a mind numbing pace. I've never considered myself a maximalist for any kind of crypto, though I've been happy to talk about what I've found compelling and what I've found not. I've been right and I've been wrong but in the end when I really care about is disruptive potential and open competition in a broad ecosystem and boy does Crypto give us that in spades.

I'm not sure what else to say here so thanks for reading. Feel free to follow and I'll be happy to follow back. I'd love to get a healthy variety of content from you folks and feel free to say hello as well. I've heard you're mostly friendly...mostly. ;)