An Origin Story by Jason Cassidy

Each person who spends any amount of appreciable time in the blockchain industry often has a unique story to tell. The path they have walked to lead them down the rabbit hole that is cryptocurrency  is often filled with euphoric highs and cavernous lows – Such is the life of a cryptonaut.

My story is no exception at all and today I shall share some of it with you. The journey begins back in the year 2012 when I was working at BlackBerry HQ in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. At the time, BlackBerry was still the king of the smartphone industry however they were quickly ceding ground to Apple’s consumer-friendly IPhone. Seeing the writing on the wall I decided it was time to make a career change.

By the summer of 2012 I had been given my severance package and was a ‘free agent’. I took the next six months to take stock of my life and the direction I wanted to take it in next. It was not too long after this that I was introduced to Bitcoin via a friend who had heard about it from yet another mutual friend. Within minutes of hearing the loose details of what Bitcoin represented I found myself enthralled in the concept and ran downstairs to my PC to do further research. Several months of investigation later I made the leap and purchased my first bitcoins at $50 CAD each.

Things accelerated from this point and by the time the summer of 2013 had rolled around I had formed my company Crypto Consultant, the 1st consultancy in Canada to exclusively focus on Bitcoin and blockchain. My good friend who initially introduced me to Bitcon, James Gonzalex, joined me on this new venture. It became instantly apparent that this was going to be a very big opportunity and we had to be ready to take on the mounting exposure and interest percolating around the fledgling currency and protocol.

Fast forward many years later and my journey has taken me to virtually every nook and cranny of the cryptocurrency industry. From helping setup exchanges, helping create currencies, advising world governments on laws and regulations, filming events and speaking on stage to today where I am part of the first gaming cryptocurrency in history at GAME Credits. 

In the present day, it is fair to say that 2021 is the Year of the NFT. The non-fungible token revolution has taken the entire planet by storm and in many cases has greatly outshone the fungible space completely. Part of the path I have walked in the blockchain world lead me to understanding what NFT’s were back in 2014 when Bitcoin attempted to create them via the colored coin protocol. The World and the Bitcoin network were not quite ready for NFT’s going prime time so the concept was more or less shelved for the better part of five years. 

It was in early 2018 that I heard the first rumblings of NFT’s again, this time in the form of a new standard that existed on the Ethereum network. When I began my career in cryptocurrency, Ethereum did not yet exist however by the time 2018 rolled around it had become the second most dominant crypto on the planet. Introducing the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards truly opened up a new dimension of possibilities for art, gaming assets, music, collectibles and virtually anything else that exists in our universe. It did not take long for me to identify that this was blockchain’s second attempt to create non-fungible tokens – and this time it was going to work. I quickly shifted my entire career’s focus in the industry from the fungible side directly over into the non-fungible realm, which was extremely young and nascent. 

What a breath of fresh air it was – to have a new set of technology standards, new use cases, new possibilities and new faces to work with. We all had one thing in common – we loved NFT’s and the freedom it gave us to express ourselves in a way fungible tokens simply could never offer us.

Today I find myself in the middle of something truly special indeed. At GAME Credits we have fully embraced the NFT revolution and have built a platform that supports the creation, buying and selling as well as full monetization of any type of NFT. What is more, Game Credits is creating a virtual playground in the form of our own Metaverse called Genesis Worlds. 

The Metaverse is the final destination for NFT’s of all types and serves as a utility layer, allowing the owners of the NFT’s to make use of them instead of simply looking at their collection in their digital wallet. Now, the NFT’s come to life and begin to truly show their potential. Metaverses are virtual worlds where one can engage in business, entertainment or leisure by experiencing the world as your virtual self via an avatar. If you have played Second Life in the past, think of a Metaverse as the next evolution of what Second Life introduced without the benefit of a blockchain multiplied by the factor of x 1000.

This is the next step in the evolution of blockchain and I am beyond excited to be a part of this story. And this is always where my story ends, for now. Each day I get up I add to this story and one can feel the accelerating speed the industry is now moving at. I encourage everyone to take a deeper look at both NFT’s and the Metaverse, including Genesis Worlds. What you will be experiencing is truly the next frontier of the digital age, so hold on tight.