Discovering Two Passions
I took the path of your typical high school grad and went straight to college. You know, the over priced route to get a piece of paper that just tells everyone you're qualified to learn. Let's be honest, the things you learn in school you hardly use, you always start learning when you start your job. Good example... I never learned in school how to efficiently slaughter and debone poultry, but with my job I've learned how to increase capacities and well... kill poultry efficiently.
After college I bought my first 3D printer, a MakerSelect v2.1. It was a pretty basic starter machine but I wanted to see if I enjoyed it before blowing a thousand or more on just another hobby. I quickly knew it was not just a hobby, and completely fell in love with everything about it.
From designing to watching your design print before your eyes… I knew I found my new passion. There was just something about being able to literally print anything, and no one to tell you otherwise. Other cool things include when something breaks around the house, just print yourself a new one, don't have the part you need while working on something? Check the internet for a file or design, and print it yourself.
The same thoughts and feelings came to me when I first found out about Bitcoin. The mind blowing idea of a “fuck you money”. The fact that the entire protocol is built by math, un-influenced by politics, race, or any other type of personal agenda. It has one purpose, and one purpose only. I quickly fell down the rabbit hole, like most people who finally see what Bitcoin truly is. As I progressed further and further down the rabbit hole, I began stashing BTC on a Ledger. After getting annoyed of having my Ledger on my desk all the time, with no real good place to store it, I thought… “Shit I'll design my own, I have a printer”. This is the exact moment where everything changed for me.
The Start of the CryptoCloaks' Rabbit Hole
In December 2017 I started combining my passion for design/3D printing with my passion for Bitcoin. I figured if I needed a place to keep my Ledger out of sight, there must be others who need it too. I opened up an Etsy shop and began selling my mounts, and the rest is history…
Just kidding! The mounts gained traction on Etsy and soon My first starter rig couldn't keep up with demand.
I bought another printer a CR-10S, a bigger printer with more bed space allowing me to print more in one run.
A few months passed by and I slowly got sick of all the fees Etsy was charging when selling on their platform. I began to look at options of running my own website, and begin accepting Bitcoin. I was running a Bitcoin company for God sakes!
In March 2018 I launched the first website (thecryptocloak.com) using Globee as my Bitcoin payment processor. Shortly after getting the website up I tried building and running my first node… it did not go well.
I failed 7+ times trying to get it up following the first RaspiBolt guide. Linux was brand new to me, I was out of my element and it was rough. I gave myself a week break to reset. When I came back I found another guide I was going to try.
This is where my love for RaspiBlitz happened. It caught my eye as there were fewer coding commands to run, and I just wanted a running node at this point. After running through the step by step guide… SUCCESS! I finally got myself a working Bitcoin node! Totally worth the headache to finally get one running and have my own copy of the blockchain.
My RaspiBlitz node was beautiful on the inside, but was lacking on the outside. I wanted to customize mine and began designing what is now The Lightning Shell. It took about 2 weeks and 15 interactions to get the very first (What I thought was final) design finished.
The Shell was amazing, it became a talking piece for anyone who looked at it. I wondered if anyone else would be interested, and added it as a trial run on the new site to see. It was a hit and people were immediately asking the one famed question “When STLs?”
That one continued question led me to bring a separate open sourced design for anyone to download. We wanted to give something back to the amazing RaspiBlitz project, as their software had helped us create one of our best products to date.
Following Through
By July 2018, I knew it was time to finally take control of my own payment processing after getting my first node running. That’s when I dug into the BTCPayServer software, and fell in love. I ordered a Gigabyte Brix mini rig, to have a little bit more stability and long term usage than a Raspberry Pi. Loaded it with BTCPayServer, and began running Bitcoin and Lightning Payments on my own. It was a beautiful feeling. This was Freedom.
The end of 2018 was when CryptoCloaks began to gain some traction, and over the past year and a half we've worked with some amazing companies. We’ve expanded from doing just mounts, to a variety of cases for different hardware, art pieces and swag.
One of the funniest moments for me was when I got the awesome chance to attend The Lightning Conference in Berlin, and people asked how many of us there were… I would answer: “...just me right now”. People were expecting this huge company with several employees, and I was just a one man crew with a dream of running my own business.
The best part so far though, happened at the end of 2019. I wanted to keep growing as a company, and knew I would need to bring on other people with the same determination and dream to make that happen. I was fortunate enough to find a guy named Lommy who could help bring amazing ideas and designs to the business. Having someone else to brainstorm and toss ideas back and forth with has been a tremendous help, and I can’t wait to see what other amazing people I can bring on board. Graphic Artist is next!
There's an astounding amount of things that have happened in the past year, like finally buying cryptocloaks.com. This happened after listening to an episode of TFTC, and hearing Alex talk about how good it felt to own river.com. It felt so damn good to finally own CryptoCloaks.com and not have to just put up with thecryptocloak.com
Getting Started With 3D Printing
I do want to end this with some 3D printing and personal recommendations, as I always get the question: Which printer should I get?
Good Starting Printers - to learn EVERYTHING about printing and dialing in settings. For me it helped a ton to know the basics before I bought my higher end printers with a lot more features. Because when things weren’t working, I knew what to target.
● Ender 3 or 5
● Prusa Mini (Back ordered)
● Monoprice Maker Select Plus
My favorite higher end printer, with an amazing set of features and a hard to beat price point, is the Prusa MK3S. This is what the shop uses for our printer farm. Some of the great key features are auto leveling beds, removable magnetic print beds, and the filament sensors. I should have a Prusa affiliate link with the amount of printers I've got my friends and others to buy. I tried, but they don't have that yet haha.
Other great resources/software for those interested in 3D printing.
● Fusion360 for designing
● Thingiverse.com for models
● The File Factory shameless plug
● 3D Printing Bitcoin Telegram Group
It’s honestly been a tremendous journey these past 2.5 years, and I’m really fortunate to have all of you guys supporting the company. Everyday I get one step closer to completing my dream of running my own business full time, and that’s thanks to all of you.
From the bottom of my heart,Thank you.
CryptoCloaks is a 3D printing, gaming & Bitcoin enthusiast. He is here to learn as much as possible about the future of money, and to use printers for something else than printing money. His printers build.