About me

As an expression of a deep, decades-long rootedness in the digital space, I consciously identify myself as a Netizen. As a member of the second half of Generation X, I didn't just spend my childhood outdoors - I grew up with the predecessors of today's internet.

As early as 1993/94 I made my first attempts at building websites, back then still for Mosaic and Netscape 2 - purely text-based, with no or minimal graphics and HTML tables as layout grids. The World Wide Web was mockingly referred to by the old hands of the Usenet scene as "FTP with makeup."

Shortly after, I worked for a small local internet provider - genuine pioneering work at the time, with modems, leased lines, and customers who first had to be told what a URL even was.

I experienced the first steps of the WWW not just as a user, but actively and professionally. My first self-written webshop application was built in the second half of the 1990s - in Perl. E-commerce back then was more of a dare than a business model.

This early technical imprinting made me both curious and critical. Bitcoin crossed my path early - I mined when it was still possible with a home CPU. But I didn't take my early successes seriously and lost the keys. In retrospect, a bitter but instructive experience.

Since 2019 I've been continuously active in the crypto world again, this time with a clear focus on privacy. For me, financial sovereignty is inseparably linked to digital self-determination. That's why I am a committed advocate of Monero (XMR). While others look for quick gains, my concern is defending the fundamental right to privacy - including in the digital space.