This is an interview with one of the world’s most creative and talented blockchain and cryptocurrency developers – Brandon ‘Synth’ Smietana, the co-founder of Skycoin, whose company develops software and hardware for decentralized networking and data storage.
He was among the blockchain pioneers who took part in writing Bitcoin’s source code with one of the most mysterious personalities of our time, Satoshi Nakamoto. Skycoin, which was launched in 2012, has no rivals in terms of its ground-breaking approach and tech savvy.
What are Skycoin’s flagship products, why is Skycoin so much more than just a crypto token, and why is its unique technology so important? We asked Smietana about all this and more.
Why was the Skycoin project created? When I say Skycoin, I mean your entire product line. What are the main problems you solve for current and potential blockchain users?
Have you ever wondered why you need platforms like YouTube, Google, Twitter, and Facebook? Do you realize that these companies control a huge array of your personal data? We give them our data, they control it, they monetize it, and they exploit us. They control people’s thinking, they rig elections, they manipulate what people see, what they hear, and eventually the objective is to manipulate how people behave. It’s about controlling people.
So, we went through this phase in the internet where everyone had a blog and it was decentralized, and then we went to this phase where three companies – Twitter, Facebook, and Google – control basically the whole internet and block off everything else. So, there’s this illusion of this global internet and people playing by the rules, and that your data is only being collected to fight terrorists. In fact, they collect it so that one group of people can economically dominate the others, and that’s what it’s being used for.
In China, Cisco routers are banned, but you can buy a Huawei router. And how do you know that the Chinese government didn’t put a backdoor in that. And when you buy an American router, you get an American backdoor. Of course, there are backdoors in all their communications equipment.
So, what Skywire is, is a neutral open-source standard for networking that will have open-source hardware. People can compile their own firmware and know there’s not a Chinese backdoor in it, or have to choose between a Russian backdoor, a Chinese backdoor, and the EU security backdoor. Businesses need to…
