While 2018 has not seemingly been the best time to be involved in the Blockchain sector, it certainly has been an excellent time to be building. At the same time basically every digital asset on the market has retraced 90% from their all-time highs, there has been a lot going on behind the scenes.

As public sentiment is low, there is little in ways of competition for those confident in the future of the technology. That being said, between the NYSE's parent company's physically backed futures (Bakkt), and Nasdaq's Bitcoin futures slated for Q1 of 2019, it is clear the fun is just getting started.

So what exactly is it like working in this new, dynamic industry? What opportunities exist, and how does it work?

I hope to answer all these questions by sharing what I have been working on in my first year as a full-time crypto-maniac. (Disclaimer: I'm mostly writing this to send to all my relatives who will be interrogating me this Christmas lol)

I quit my tech company desk job in the fall of 2017. Since then I have traveled the country building 3 main projects and a media brand to help cover, promote and connect these endeavors to the community.

It may seem ridiculous to work on so many things at once, but because of the internet and the nature of cryptocurrency, it is very possible to work/transact with multiple teams all around the world.

The 3 main projects I have been working on this year are:

• NLOS: No Limit Operating System

• Arbitraj.io

• PontiacNow

All of which benefit from our crypto social media brand (Sorry mom/professional friends, had to go with an edgy name here, haha):

• BlockchainBastards

Below I will be giving a summary of each, how they work together and the progress we've made this last year.

NLOS: No Limit Operating System

The first project that brought me into the development side of the industry was known as NLC2: No Limit Fantasy Sports. I joined the team last fall as the projects Copywriter, but my role quickly grew to include representing the company at industry events all around the country and assisting with general business development strategy.

Make sure to check for me under the team section of the website, as well as the official whitepaper

The project originally started as simply a crypto fantasy sports platform, it has since grown to be something much larger.

This year, the platform has not only added 5 of the most popular sports but a custom fantasy Crypto investing game and the internet's 1st no rake poker site.

Next year, the coin will be forking onto an EOS chain, which will allow the games themselves to become full DAPPs (decentralized applications) and run on the blockchain. This will also allow other game developers to build their games on top of the No Limit Operating System cheaper then they could on the main EOS chain.

Its unique value proposition over traditional gaming platforms are the extremely low fees allowed by having a platform with its own proprietary utility token. Having its own uber efficient currency allows for nearly instant withdrawals, enables the platform to offer free roll contests at minimal cost to themselves and easy global access for players.

NLOS is also a great on-ramp for people looking to enter the crypto-space as it allows users to buy coins directly with a credit card on the platform, and will be launching a custom debit card next year to allow direct cashout into dollars.

To learn more about the project and other coming developments, please check out the most recent update article I've written here:

Arbitraj.io

Shortly after leaving my desk job and starting with No Limit, I met with a local artificial intelligence programmer and began discussing how the tech could be used in the space. We quickly realized that there was a huge opportunity in automatized trading.

The project would evolve several times from there as we determined that arbitrage trading should be our focus. After merging with a similar project's team, Arbitraj.io was born.

Arbitraj.io is essentially a suite of software tools that allow users to take advantage of crypto price discrepancies across exchanges. As there are over 1300 different cryptocurrencies at this point, and new exchanges popping up every day, there are plentiful opportunities to buy low on one and immediately sell high on another.

To help people take advantage of this, we offer several different products

• Website: users can view and search for the top spread for free.

• Chrome extension: Much like the popular online shopping extension "Honey", ours alerts users to better prices elsewhere right as they go to buy an asset on an exchange. Please check out our Product Hunt pageand leave a review!

• API: One of our paid offerings is access to our proprietary arbitrage API, which will allow others to build products and services using our software.

• Institution Grade Arbitrage Trading platform: we have been talks with hedge funds about utilizing our technology for consistent near 0 risk trades. While 1% differences don't seem lucrative, when you are working with large amounts of capital, they quickly become irresistible. Our professional grade auto trading platform allows for one-click arbitrage trades, taking all the legwork out of execution.

Check out the article Business Insider wrote on us here

• Consumer Arbitrage Trading Platform: Soon we will be offering a paid auto trading platform for our retail customers as well. This service will allow you to plug in your exchange API keys and enable one-click trades. This will no doubt become our most popular tool.

• Decentralized Exchange Arbitrage Platform: we have recently added the popular decentralized exchange (or DEX) Idex to our platform. In addition to this, we have been talks with Totle (a DEX consolidation trading platform) since meeting them at Crypto Invest Summit in LA, and again at Tech Week in Detroit. We hope to use their newly released API to execute arbitrage trades between DEX's. This is important for several reasons.

Check out our update article on this here

1. DEXs have no central point of failure, operate autonomously, and don't require you to give over the ownership of your assets to a third party. This allows a much more frictionless and secure trading for our automated platform as were are interacting with code, not an organization.

2. DEX's are currently not very user-friendly, meaning that the trading volume is relatively low, and therefore price changes take longer to transfer between exchanges.

Dex's are the future and we plan to be on the forefront of the wave.

PontiacNow

My most recent (and probably most impactful) project is PontiacNow.

I had just spent my first week in Atlanta after deciding to move south when I returned home to see my family for Easter. While back in the Metro Detroit area, I was approached by an old soccer teammate and fellow entrepreneur about an opportunity to help rebuild one of the state's oldest cities.

Needless to say, I did not return to Georgia.

Having lived in downtown Detroit in the middle of the breathtaking transformation that has taken place there over the last 7 years, I jumped at the chance to get a meaningful role in doing the same to its sister city.

Pontiac is in a very similar situation now to where Detroit was, (fitting as Detroit is the oldest city and Pontiac is the second oldest in the state), we have beautiful historic offices buildings and houses that are underutilized due to the decline of the domestic auto industry.

Below is the demo video we created to introduce Pontiac to the world:

Essentially our goal is to utilize blockchain to help modernize, rejuvenate, and attract investment into the Pontiac business environment.

Pontiac is an ideal town for crypto-companies as we are in an "opportunity zone", meaning a building purchased (and held for 7 years) with capital gains earnings will be able to circumvent capital gains tax. As most blockchain based projects have a large amount of their income in capital gains, this is basically a gimme for those looking to set up shop physically.

We are focusing on what we call our four "C"'s of building a next-gen business community:

• Cryptography:

We are aiming to bring downtown Pontiac to 100% point of sale retail acceptance. We have partnered with BlocPal to integrate their instant transaction system across the city. We are also working with a third party to facilitate direct crypto for real estate transactions to further simplify the process of moving your crypto business here.

• Community:

We are looking to strengthen the local blockchain community by offering free EOS technician training, weekly meetups and co-working spaces. Our goal is to return our city back to its native American nomadic roots and make it as attractive as possible to the new highly mobile online business class.

• Cannabis:

The state of Michigan has officially legalized recreational marijuana use as of December 5th, and thus begins a whole new industry to build. Pontiac is extremely well positioned to be a hub for this industry. While nearby suburb cities like Livonia (where I grew up) vote to not allow dispensaries, Pontiac just voted to allow 20. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in this industry is banking. The existing federal ban on the substance prevents federally insured banks from holding cannabis profits. This means that dispensaries are huge targets for robbery as everyone knows they have huge amounts of cash on hand. We will be outfitting them with crypto ready point of sale systems to completely circumvent this issue.

• Content:

No matter how awesome Pontiac is, it won’t matter if we don’t get the word out. That is we have an aggressive content creation/marketing campaign planned. Our team includes a local digital advertising firm known as Mindset Marketing who is running a full spectrum social media content and advertising push. We are currently on our 5th podcast, where we interview local movers and shakers to get the inside scoop on the city. You can listen to it on the blockchain based Soundcloud alternative D-Sound here.

You can learn more by visiting our website, and reading my deep dive article: Puerto Rico on a Peninsula? How Pontiac, Michigan is Becoming a Cryptopia.

BlockchainBastards

The common link between all my endeavors is my personal blockchain social media brand. The Bastards act as a platform with which I can publish content on all my other projects (like what I'm doing right now lol).

Having a separate entity for public-facing operations like media production, social media networking, and industry events allows me to form relationships with other influencers in the space without pressuring them to support the specific projects I work on.

This has lead to me forming many close relationships with many high profile members of the community, such as Morgan Creek Partner, and host of the most popular crypto podcast "Off The Chain"Anthony Pompliono (Pomp), and Steem witness extraordinaire Luke Stokes

Omar Bahm (Crypt0), Ran Neuner (of CNBC Crytpo) , Boxmining

and Crypto Daily.

This year we attended almost every major industry event: CES, BTC Miami, Anarchopolco, Blockchain Unbound, NAC3, Crypto Invest Summit,Consensus and many more (Click on any event to read our recap).

We publish our content exclusively on blockchain based platforms like the one you're reading this on right now. Specifically, Steemit.com and it's accompanying platforms such as D.tube and Dsound. These platforms not only protect us from censorship but also allow us to reward those who interact with our content through monetary upvote (make an account and comment on this post and we will give you a small amount of crypto for free).

We firmly believe that the Steem blockchain and the platforms that will utilize it's upcoming Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) will not only be extremely successful but will bring the mainstream into using crypto.

If you would like to read deeper into why we believe this, and how Steemit works, please check out our article here

Looking back, I have personally made an innumerable amount of mistakes this year, experienced the birth of one of the most disruptive industries of all time, and had the honor of working with some fantastic people.

I have gone from shamed and criticized for dedicating myself to this field, to praised and respected, then all the way back to being pitied.

I wouldn't have it any other way, haha

Throughout my entrepreneurship career, it has always been the least popular endeavors that have turned out to be the best opportunities.

I think the most important thing I've learned this year is to always trust your intuition. If you have done your research and believe 100% that something is the future, follow that feeling regardless of what others say.

In the words of the late Steve Jobs "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." Steve said that we have to trust that looking backward we'll be able to see how all the pieces fell together to fulfill our ultimate goals.

I think Steve was right,

I also think if he was my age he'd be building something on the blockchain right now too ;)

Peace, Love, Anarchy,

Vote for our friend Luke Stokes for witness!