Hi there. My name is Andrew DeSantis. I've been a holder of Bitcoin since 2011 and I have been working in Bitcoin full time since mid-2013.
Some of you may know of me as the guy from Alabama who created an unofficial app store (Bit Store) for iOS and Android in response to Apple's ban on Bitcoin wallets.
In 2014, I spent nearly half a year in Toronto working on various Bitcoin projects with individuals at the Bitcoin Decentral Accelerator. It was there I saw the genesis of Dark Market (now OpenBazzar) and Ethereum first hand.
At the end of 2014, I had the opportunity to buy Bitcoin Magazine with some friends of mine from Alabama and together we started BTC Inc. (the parent company of BTC Media).
As the CTO of BTC Inc. I led the development of the CMS that now powers Bitcoin Magazine. This task was particularly difficult because at the start of 2015 all of our websites (ybitcoin.com, bitcoinmagazine.com, btcmedia.org) came under what went on to be an 8 month long DDoS attack. We opted for a complete rebuild of our systems because a majority of our legitimate traffic at the time either routed through TOR or disabled JavaScript by default.
In addition to my duties as CTO, I served as the Tech Editor for both yBitcoin and Bitcoin Magazine, as well as a member of the Bitcoin Foundation's Grant Selection Committee. On rare occasion I would write for the Magazine.
While working at BTC Inc. I attended countless Bitcoin Conferences, helped organize the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.
At the end of 2015, I decided to move to California and I took a job working at 21 Inc. There I assisted with a class at Stanford on Bitcoin Engineering in addition to doing architecture and security work.
As of now I am the CEO of DeSantis Inc and I'm working on various stealth Bitcoin projects with a team on the east coast of the United States. I continue to write and code side projects indecently though.
How I came across Steemit
A few years ago I started an IRC channel in order to keep up with bitcoin friends whom I've met while traveling. For the past week or so Steemit is all they seemed to want to talk about. I ignored them at first but finally decided to see what all the fuss is about.
Last night I compiled and started running a Steemit miner. I plan on auditing the code in depth this weekend and writing a tutorial (or creating a build script) so that others can try it out as well if they desire.
Additionally I plan on annotating the white paper and auditing the Steemit source code in order to get a better understanding on how it works. I'll try to have something written up as soon as possible.
I am not particularly a fan of appcoins, but I have learned to audit code before judging a project. So that is exactly what I am doing with Steemit!
Looking forward to learning more and writing about the platform as the week goes on. Also, you can find me on Twitter at @desantis.