Easy: I got the shit kicked out of me and had all my money stolen at a pivotal time in life. I was maybe 12 or 13. I had $300 saved up and it was my intention to use savings to get out of a shitty situation and make it to college.

Losing that money was a tough pill to swallow. Fast forward 20+ years and I read a slashdot article on Bitcoin. And then immediately I read the white paper, which is rather informal and easy to read compared to my undergrad training in astrophysics and math. I was running Bitcoin software within minutes. Only learned I had to select generate from a menu like a day or so later (the burden of being busy is that stupid things happen frequently).

It was a desire to provide a safe place for others to store money that can’t be stolen that lead me to mine. I was fortunate to have the right technical background to understand how bitcoin could work but not so much education so as to see ways that it might not work…Goldilocks zone for heart and head education pre-bitcoin.