Please proceed
OK, I would like to allay some of the conspiracy type concerns you or others may have. So here is “too much information.”
I can’t speak for others on the project but can give you some background on myself and the SolarCoin project.
I was born and grew up in small town Iowa.
I worked in the soybean fields and on road crews during my teen age summers.
I spent my earnings on penny stocks and started trading Japanese yen futures at age 17 making broker calls from the principles office. and Yes this is painfully cliche.
In college at the University of Iowa I dropped out of pursuing business school because most traditional economics seemed false and the rest could be learned in a book. I studied cultural anthropology with a focus on sustainable economic development in West Africa.
I was in a fraternity the whole time.
During college I camped around morocco for 2 weeks (deserts, oasis, fez, marrakech, the roman ruins of volubalis and later that year spent 3 weeks traveling in Niger between Mali and Chad with peace corps volunteers to understand chronic poverty and the human condition, even visited a leper colony on camel back treating a case of the runs with my magic johnny walker 1:6 ratio medicine.
I started a software company in college with 7 friends while doing thermodynamic research for a Japanese industrial manufacturer. In my spare time I researched applying neural networks and genetic algorithms to trade t-bonds. (losing money due to curve fitting i might add.)
After college I worked as a runner (lowest pad grunt) in the T-bond options pit at the chicago board of trade.
I then worked in the back office doing technology stuff for the Swiss bank corporation now UBS.
I moved to Paris and attended at the time one of the top 100 MBA programs in the world, at the ENPC a Grande Ecole established by Napoleon. My thesis was on quantitative approaches for hedge funds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_des_ponts_ParisTechI was hired by BNP one of the top 10 banks in the world at the time to build models and trade Foreign Exchange in London, the world’s Forex Capital.
After that I was concerned about the Y2K ($200-300 billion dollar) problem. Sitting in London with my dog and girlfriend I personally researched and drafted a report on the international implications for international systems and countries. Within 2 months of publication I was called in by the US senate to give testimony as a global expert. Ignore the poor choice of late 90's facial hair.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?152780-1/international-preparedness-year-2000-computer-problemOther “experts” that day included individuals from the DoD, WorldBank, US. State Dept, Dept. Of Commerce and CIA. Work dried up a bit on Jan 1, 2000.
While reading the paper time in Hyde park on Sunday as un-employed guy in London I came across an article about a privately funded deep future science lab in Brussels modeled on the MIT media lab. I emailed the CEO that day, flew over next week, had lunch and was hired on the spot. I was the chief analyst helping formulate business strategy, and IP capture for the institute. Projects under this remit involved multiple Phd level researchers. My remit: included 3 schools of artificial intelligence, quantum consciousness, robotics lab, what at the time was to be the world’s largest gene gathering project, Time Travel (yes you read that right), quantum computation, protein folding and many other projects. The staff included people who were associated with or had worked for Bell labs, Darpa, ESA (european space administration) MIT, etc.. One researcher a friend of mine is just getting ready to post his research on using black-holes for hyper computing and has designed an optical analog black hole using meta-materials and lasers in his basement. There were two noble laureates on our board and Nicholas Negroponte the founder of the MIT media lab. I still collaborate and work some of these starlab people. One of whom may agree to head up the Electricchain project. video of starlab here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X_HDSQXMI0After that I consulted for VCs and firms on technology strategy before returning to the states. I launched a failed start-up in southern California and took 2nd place in the 2006 Southern California Pitch fest. My trials and tribulations are available in the documentary (Venture town)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Venture-Town-USA-DVD-Entrepreneur-Documentary-/191762011961 (not my listing)
I moved to new york, where I was hired by a tiny hedge fund $50m to be their renewable energy analyst. After 3 months of research into all aspects of renewable energy in 2007, I reported it was all too expensive for investing. I took short positions in the Mortgage Insurance companies based on my analysis of the housing crash which felt inevitable. (An explanation for the simple analysis behind this is in my book The Nature of Value. see later). For my efforts I received a small amount of money and lost my job as the fund’s other positions went the way of the market in 2008. ps. buy my book and I make $2. As I tell my students at Columbia, if you don't like it I will pay you $2 and you can chase Columbia University for the rest.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0231162448/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=desibettfutu-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0231162448&adid=029MFX179JJPC8D29DF4&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Frcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com%2Fe%2Fcm%3Ft%3Ddesibettfutu-20%26o%3D1%26p%3D8%26l%3Das1%26asins%3D0231162448%26ref%3Dqf_sp_asin_til%26fc1%3D000000%26IS2%3D1%26lt1%3D_blank%26m%3Damazon%26lc1%3D0000FF%26bc1%3D000000%26bg1%3DFFFFFF%26f%3DifrI wrote a book “the nature of value” published by Columbia University Business press. The Columbia University press publishes 3-5 books a year and I was a first time non-academic author writing about “value” investing at the school where Benjamin Graham taught Warren Buffett how to invest. I now guest lecture in the program teaching about innovation and macro-economics. My book, The Nature of Value explains how the economy is effectively an extension of evolution in the socio-economic domain. It also explains monetary theory and how to understand innovation etc. After completing the book, I did some research and realized that the section on economic and monetary diversification using a quadrant grid matches up perfectly with both Berkshire Hathaways holdings and the World’s best macro-economic Hedge fund. I am not allowed to mention the name of the hedge fund as they are very secretive and I was hired by them after drafting my book.
www.thenatureofvalue.comI co-authored a paper (my first) on the concept of an energy backed currency for fun in 2011 but realized one needed a central bank to play such games. For what it is worth Henry Ford liked the idea of an energy backed currency in the 1920’s.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802166In late 2013, I realized that currency has no intrinsic value but derives its economic function as a social protocol with network effects whose positive externalities could be used to incentive solar energy. SolarCoin was launched in 2014.
www.solarcoin.orgSince that time, SolarCoin has been written up in 23 countries and mentioned in Scientific American, The New Scientist and other journals. The SolarCoin team has pitched the idea to marketing groups associated with the Rockefeller Foundation and made multiple trips to the 56th floor of Rockefeller center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Rockefeller_PlazaThese ultimately lead to no successful outcomes. Briefly the SolarCoin technical team maintained a small office/desk in the map room at New York’s Famous Explorers club whose member have included many people who have been to the moon and been president of the United States.
https://explorers.org/Currently SolarCoin is deployed in 17 countries and anticipates that to grow. The electricchain project is in the process of speaking with NASA, MIT, Reuters and many serious finance and technology experts in the Blockchain and Internet of Things world including Ethereum and IOTA.
www.electricchain.orgSo there you have it, I am sure someone can cook up a conspiracy theory from all of that.....please hold off on the "sunshine nakamoto" jokes. I am not the only person involved in this effort and others are working much harder than I am behind the scenes. They may disclose or not details about themselves.
