For June's edition in our 21 Questions series, we bringing you a 'twofa', a '241', a special offer, or more precisely, a Krist-offer and his brother Kasper from the recently launched TokenGen project, so two respondents for the price of one!
TokenGen positions itself as the solution you've been waiting for to create your BSC tokens easily, oriented to the creation and publication of Smart Contracts (BEP20) within the Binance network (Smart Chain), but more on that later...so let's get into it!
decentralize.today: if you could choose three words to describe yourself what would they be and why?
Enthusiastic: I love talking about the projects I’m in and how they work. I get new ideas every week but only very few get into the real world.. But once they do, I can’t stop.
DT: How, why and when did you get into marketing free and open-source software?
This is a fun story that began all the way back in 2008 I believe. My brother and I were both “kids” messing around with World of Warcraft Private Server Emulations. This was the first open-source software we ever worked with/used. Since then we’ve used many different open-source networks. I, myself, am personally not a developer, but my brother has been developing/contributing to a lot of bigger open-source projects and is actually the goto guy, when it comes to the development behind TokenGen.
DT: What were you doing professionally before TokenGen?
Kristoffer:
Before working with tokengen I worked with the Danish Patient Safe Authority to help decrease the spreading of the Coronavirus. I actually still work with this. I’ve been working with the corona contact tracing team for almost 9 months now.
Kasper:
I work in IT. At the moment I administer support, network, maintenance, infrastructure, programming etc. for 1 medium and 2 smaller companies.
DT: How would you describe your current work to a 5 year old kid?
Kristoffer:
I help people make their own coins on the internet.
Kasper:
I make sure all of my colleagues can do their work.
DT: What was your first ever job (even as a kid)?
I delivered papers to nearby households. My mother was head of recruiting, so I got my job as a 12 year old little boy. Ever since I’ve been working at McDonalds and 2 other restaurants.
DT: Who is your biggest inspiration when it comes to work/business?
Elon Musk for sure. The way he dedicates all of his time into his business and strives to make the world a better place is just phenomenal.
DT: What’s the best life and work advice you’ve ever been given?
Look forward but never forget the past. Basically keep moving but don’t forget the screwups you’ve done in the past.
DT: Your favorite superhero or fictional character, and why?
Gotta be Iron Man - Basically the film version of Elon Musk. A super billionaire making the world a better place.
DT: What were you like as a student?
Kristoffer:
I would say I was the average student. I haven’t done any major education. I’m mostly self taught in everything I do. Though I did keep up in english and math, completing my high school with A+ grades in those subjects.
Kasper:
I didn’t have much enthusiasm during primary school. Towards the end of primary school I got interested in the STEM and Language fields, and once I started Technical College I became a “straight A” type of student.
DT: What would be your dream project if money were not an object?
Kristoffer:
This is a tough one. I’ve always said to myself that I want to be my own boss, but the subject never really mattered in any way. But if I have to choose, I’d probably go into space/rocket technology. I’ve been fascinated by space ever since I was a child. I can still spend hours watching netflix documentaries about outer/deep space.
Kasper:
I’ve always had this dream of opening my own shop, only selling high-end custom build computers. I love building computers for myself/friends/family, there’s just something soothing about it, until the thing won’t boot...
DT: What is your favorite sport or game to watch?
Kristoffer:
To be perfectly honest, I do not watch sports. But with that said, I’ve always loved eSport, so that’d be my goto. Probably in the CS:GO scene.
Kasper:
I’m not really interested in “real” sports, but I do like watching competitive StarCraft. I don’t play anymore myself, but I like to watch it every once in a while.
DT: Working in the software development area and specifically the free and open-source variety, how do you decide your strategic focus and determine priorities or do those establish themselves?
We didn’t have any strategy when we started back in January. We saw that the BSC contract creation was on its way up with many new tokens being made and thought we should try to get a piece of the cake. After months of development and testing we finally launched in May (A bit too late, but better late than never). Our priorities have always been user friendly and easy-to-use systems. This is also why we’ve already gotten quite a few customers and we’ve ONLY had good feedback from customers.
DT: Who are your real life heroes?
Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin and Satoshi Nakamoto.
DT: What does your family think of your work and advocacy of online inclusivity and privacy?
They don’t really understand much, though I am running Tokengen with my brother, we share a 50/50 split of the project. My girlfriend is mostly annoyed by how much time I spend on developing new marketing strategies and new ideas for our project. With telegram, tiktok, reddit and twitter, it’s a lot of work.
DT: What was the last book you read that you would recommend to others?
Eeh… I do not read books. I think the last time I read a book was in high school. I get most of my information from the internet and I learn by doing, I don’t really believe that I, personally, can learn a lot by reading a book.
DT: What grinds your gears or are your pet peeves? What do you really dislike?
Kristoffer:
People who don’t trust in projects. Prove them wrong. There’s a lot of success stories from people who either didn’t attend school or didn’t finish their education. Take a look at Mark Zuckerberg, founder of facebook. Dropped out of Harvard and has a net worth in the 10s of billions.
Kasper:
People who don't fact-check, or don’t show source criticality, people who purposely spread mis-information.
DT: Do you have an “I lost my private keys” type story or a crazy privacy/software related story? Do share!
Not really a lost private key, but a similar story happened back in 2012/2013. My brother and I were mining bitcoin on our gaming rigs back then. Back then the difficulty of mining was low, and anyone could mine from a basic computer. We could mine about ~ 0,5-1 btc a day combined. We used these bitcoins to gamble for fun on dice websites. We just recently in 2021 found our old wallets, and let's just say millions of funds were moved back then, if you take the prices today.
Another story; My parents bought 20$ worth of Dogecoins back in 2015, where the price of dogecoins was like nothing. They had ~ 160,000 dogecoins and we forgot about them. After the hype in 2021 we tried to find out where we bought them and if we could restore them somehow. We later found out that we bought them on an exchange that closed down late 2015 and there was no way to recover them. So that’s another 100,000 dollars out of the window, unfortunately. Hopefully my parents didn’t mind too much. They only really lost their initial investment of $20.
DT: Where do you see software development and online privacy in ten years time? Where would you like to see them?
Kristoffer:
It’s hard to think about this, so I’ll quote from Anonyme.
“Decentralized identity technologies are a holistic solution to privacy and they will be widely embraced. Decentralized identity will reduce the need for centralized databases to the absolute minimum and thus give consumers complete control and ownership over their personal data, make businesses less vulnerable to data misuse, and limit cyberattacks, fraud and other financial crimes. The compliance burden will lessen within an open, trustworthy, interoperable, and standards-based identity management ecosystem, and new business alliances based on secure communication and information exchange (e.g. in medical or education) will emerge. “
As for software development I have no words. Go back 20 years and ask the same question. People would go nuts if you told them that we’d have all the information in the world available on a tiny device, known as “Smart Phones”.
Kasper:
We’ll probably have 1533 new JavaScript frameworks, all with so many dependencies it makes the black hole in the center of the galaxy look like a grain of sand. Either that, or someone manages to make a de facto standard they, somehow, managed to get everyone to use.
As for privacy, that will be completely gone. The new generation that are growing up, surrounded by social media and IoT devices, don’t care about privacy. Most of them will have their entire life story up on different social media platforms, from pre-birth to grave.
DT: What's your go-to form of entertainment or pastime? What do you do for fun? ?
Kristoffer:
I play games online. World of Warcraft to be more specific. I also enjoy hanging out with friends - both offline and online.
Kasper:
I play Path of Exile, a lot.
DT: You have the power to solve one world problem forever. Which one would you choose?
Poverty for sure.
DT: What would be the one thing you would say to your 18 year old self, if you had the chance?
Stop being an idiot with your money. Don’t waste it on stupid stuff. INVEST IN CRYPTO.
Whilst we have you on the line, so to speak, maybe you would like to share the 'what's next' for you and TokenGen?
The next step for tokengen is to create upgradeable contracts for our customers. We want to go even deeper into solidity contracts and learn how to create contracts that have never been seen before. We want to develop new one of a kind contracts. It’s very important to point out that most of our work is done purely through customer inputs. We gather all information about their wishes and then we make a plan on what the next plan for TokenGen is. So in the end, it’s all up to the consumers of our products.
Thank you, guys, very illuminating! For further information on the TokenGen project see the recent review decentralize.today carried on the project:
Eliécer Hernández
To contact the brothers use:
Or follow via:
TokenGen Telegram: https://t.me/tokengennet
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/tokengen
Follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tokengennet
