I’ve always readily told everyone who asks that I am a child of the 2013 bubble. Right or wrong, the speculative opportunity is what initially brought me to Bitcoin. Back then I could never have imagined the depth of the rabbit hole I was about to fall into. Following the white rabbit, I discovered a world of opportunities where I could not only reinvent my own future but that of the entire world along with it.

When it rose from the ashes left by the 2008 economic depression, Bitcoin promised a more accountable alternative, one in which individuals could achieve financial sovereignty without having to trust anyone’s word for it. One where the rules of the games could no longer be rigged by the few at the expense of the many. Over the last few years I have become increasingly convinced that the consensus trust model behind Bitcoin could shift the balance of power and bring about a more fair and stable economy.

There is a too-long-to-name list of people, groups, writers, tweet-ers & wizards I owe a lot to for opening my eyes to this force of nature. Along the way, I’ve scratched the darkest corners of this ecosystem always in an attempt to challenge and shape my opinion. It has been a long roller coaster of highs and lows and there are surely things I’ve said along the way that I would be embarrassed about today.

I come from a small, french-speaking, city in Canada where innovation and ideas sometimes lag behind. There isn’t much in terms of Bitcoin adopters around here. Very early on the absence of a local community turned my attention toward online forums. Bitcointalk, Reddit and eventually Twitter became my sanctuaries, the only place where I could engage with those who had, like me, succumbed to the siren song of Bitcoin.

It was in the wake of the block size debate that I finally enjoyed my first opportunity to meet like minded people face-to-face. As expected, the first Scaling Bitcoin event in Montreal was, for me, a revelation. My interactions with other participants there and the rich collection of people present fed me a unique energy and desire to go beyond my previous observer role.

I started keeping an eye open for opportunities for productive endeavours and ways to collaborate with others on advancing the common understanding around this technology and its implications for our society. I eventually chose to set my focus on technical development, and with that in mind decided to attend the Milan edition of Scaling Bitcoin in October. If anything, code and the Bitcoin protocol might just be the one element tying us all together in spite of our cultural, philosophical and political differences.

Through a fortunate turn of events, I met there Dr. Adam Back. Like a lot of us I share a great admiration for his work and I have always been fond of the company he helped found: Blockstream. Coincidentally, their cornerstone technology, Sidechains, is probably the very first innovation I championed to whomever wanted to hear it. I believe that Blockstream possesses the most prolific group of contributors in the space. More importantly, their vision, motivation, and mission is, in my opinion, unparalleled.

When the company was founded late 2014, Adam made a commitment to turn Blockstream into an “open-source champion”. Two years in, I can only say their track record speaks for itself. Consider, for example, Segregated Witness; the Bitcoin soft-fork proposition shepherded by Blockstream founder Pieter Wuille that was introduced on the Elements Alpha platform in mid-2015 and eventually, with the help of other Bitcoin Core contributors, made it into the 0.13.1 release of the project. While it is still waiting for activation, another feature initially proposed in Elements Alpha, Relative Lock Time (CSV), is now live on the Bitcoin network and directly contributes to the emergence of second-layer protocols such as Lightning.

For that, and many other reasons, I am absolutely grateful to announce that, starting today, I have been contracted by Blockstream to help communicate the essence of some of the technologies they are developing and hopefully generate interest around their potential and enable more people to build on them in the spirit of permissionless innovation.

My involvement is first and foremost an attempt to foster growth in Bitcoin and its open-source community. The founders of Blockstream imagine a new generation of fair, open and accountable financial platforms. I believe the same precepts apply to maintaining an healthy & collaborative ecosystem and so I look forward to continue engaging with all of you as we all contribute, in our own ways, to help moving this industry forward.