Hello Steemit users! I am taking this great opportunity to introduce myself.
My name is Anton and i am from Russia. Even cryptocurrencies are prohibited here, we still have strong crypro-community. We try not to think a lot about all that BS 'government' stuff here, so we drink a lot of vodka and it probably helps)).
I worked as a C++ programmer (i really loved it!), then built several web startups and now i'm in crypto for...about 2 years. I am really excited about Steem and power it gives. I am really into technology but don't like that 'pump-and-dump' stuff. So i will down-vote all that "hey, let me write 100500 articles on a Steemше just to get some money" posts) Of course that's a joke, because even such behaviour is OK for the platform.
I am sure that decentralisation will change our world faster then we think. Instant ability to get paid for some actions (like posting or returning some data through API calls) is an awesome thing. Recently 21co has open sourced its Machine Payable Web library and that was a cool thing that pushes us even closer to that goal.
I do believe that Google will be disrupted (oh, such a marketing buzzword)) in like 10 years by some decentralised organization. What it would be under the hood - blockchain (DLT) or some other stuff, PoW or PoS, i don't care. As Willaim Mougayar said in comments:
What will be more important is WHAT you can do with each one of these mechanisms. People will forget what's under the hood, and will go for the outside features, in case it will be the Applications. Give me a good decentralized application that works well and scales, and I won't care if it was built on POS, POW or whatever". So we have to be focused on a real-world applications that gives user some real profit. And Steemit is the best primer of good product<->market fit. It grows like startup must - doubling each week. We can be proud of being the first Steemit supporters. I wish that Steemit will be our next Facebook!
Really impressive to see a lot of early adopters that are positive and open-minded.
Most of all I like these kind of projects: MaidSafe (even it still has no product after 10 years of development), IPFS, FreeNet, BitSpray, Storj and ZeroNet. And BTW - see this news about Shift here, it's really promising.
Decentralisation started with transmitting crypto currency (what is not of my interests) and then shifted into really cool areas like certificate issuing, naming services, networks (meshes) and social media platforms . It will be more difficult for governments/corporations to control our life.
Do you want me to post more about Russia, crypto-community here, or about technologies? Please vote in comments) I highly appreciate that. That would be my first Steemit comments!
Have a good day.
I would like to know to what extent the Russians are ignoring your country laws' regarding using cryptocurrencies.
Russian government currently is not blocking ports or foreign crypto-exchanges. We can't use BTCs here to pay, but otherwise it is OK. They stated several times that "blockchain is OK, but cryptocurrencies are not" (how that could work one without another?)) Actually - cryptocurrency legal status here is weird and unclear. All we know is that it is not 'allowed' but still not 'prohibited'.
Of course, if they want to block it - they might do that. But it seems to me that this problem is not so big to them so they just don't want to act yet.
Can you pay for items that you buy from someone outside of Russia with Bitcoin?
Yes, sure. I never did this myself (KGB is watching me)))
How my government would know that i've maid the purchase? The other thing is that we have no local exchanges, some foreign exchanges are not working with ruble, local merchants can't receive BTC payments, etc...
To a huge extent I would say)