Hacker Perspective: Rick Swords
Growing up, my father was the director of electronics for a large, cash heavy medical center campus. This meant that he and his crew were responsible for sourcing and maintaining every piece of technology in the place. Sometimes in the summers I would go to the electronics lab with him on the lower level of the hospital and the techs and engineers would let me solder, and tinker, and tolerate my begging for food.
Sometime thereafter, my father would ask me to help him get some things out of his car that would change my life... forever. After some heavy lifting, sitting in our dining room which became an office after he and my mother divorced, there was no more china cabinet, fancy seats and table settings - just an IBM PC XT with dual 5¼" inch floppy drives, 640k RAM a 10 MB hard drive, keyboard, IBM amber monitor, dot matrix printer, and a Hayes 300 baud modem. For those of you who don't go back this far, 300 baud is about 0.3 kb/sec which equals... infinitely faster than nothing. Huge technical books about the PC, DOS, BASIC programming, Lotus 1-2-3 (you may know this as some form of spreadsheet), and other floppy disk applications.
My father was keen to get his entire budget and spending practices into Lotus and hand them to higher ups as a signal to back off, give him what he wanted, and generally make his job easier. So the first thing he did was to teach me to load the application; open the proper file; enter the data and formulas in their correct cells, columns, and rows; and save the file. This may not sound like much, but this entailed teaching me the DOS command line for creating, saving, and manipulating files. I caught on pretty quickly - not because I was some sort of financial wiz, but finishing the tasks he assigned meant I had the whole setup to myself until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. Then do it all over again.
It was on. I was dialing up BBSes to chat, play games, try to break things, and other fun and mischief. I connected with other kids and adults who taught me tips and tricks of all sorts. My first real game was Zork. I quickly learned that I sucked at games and was more into just exploring and learning new things.
Thirty-five years later, my friends still joke that they only knew I was home if they saw the amber screen glowing through the window of our dining room. A yell meant "Yo, u good?" A whistle meant "Pause that shit and get outside - we got some gangbangin' to do!" That was me. Part time geek, part time street kid. This dichotomy of interests would continue to shape my life for a long time. The older kids in the neighborhood knew I was generally smart, and encouraged me to nurture my intellect, and not to get caught up in the street life. I loved my fellow Vice Lords and they knew it. I eventually was given the rank and role of "Minister of Lit." My duties included maintaining the "literature" or rules, regulations, and creed of our organization, and maintaining copies of this for new and old recruits. I also kept minutes of meetings and assigned security details. Sounds fancy for some 12- to 21-year-old street kids, but back in those days we had order and maintained it. Period.
Maybe you can see where this is going. Soon all the Lords in my hood had printed copies of our Lit, prayers (yes, we prayed), meeting minutes, roll calls, etc. This would eventually get us very high praise when we would attend the larger meetings of groups of neighborhoods to "check in" and generally assemble. We became known as a group that had our shit together, and I became known as the "go to" for teaching other MOL officers to keep tight records. Please note, although there was plenty of unlawful action going on, record keeping was strictly from an organizational standpoint. Internal and clerical - same as any other private social club or similar group.
I was young, smart, tough, chubby, wore glasses, and I was honest. These traits were unique in the body politic, and I was cherished and protected by the older members. I felt the love and returned it. I needed it to survive outdoors.
One day in eighth grade science class, the principal got on the PA system and asked if I was present. My teacher answered in the affirmative, and she responded by saying that I need to come to her office immediately because "We think his house is on fire." It was. My school was one block away and I could see the smoke as I left the schoolhouse. I made it there to a scene of fire trucks, police cars, smoke, water... lots of water, and the bottom half of my childhood home dripping and smoldering.
The other thing I saw was my father. He was leaning on his car, smoking a cigarette and talking to the Red Cross and firefighters. My father grew up in the Bronzeville area of Chicago, was a Navy veteran, and was a cool customer. He was like me, but better. He was smart, tough, and well respected. I'm saying this to say, we didn't exchange too many words. "What happened, Dad?" "They don't know yet" was enough for both of us. We were more interested in the next plan of action.
First thing was two brown paper sacks from the Red Cross that contained underwear, t-shirts, and socks for the both of us. My father finished some business with the firefighters - they left. Then the insurance company chatted with us and gave me a thick stack of lined paper, and gave my father a check. You get three checks when your life burns down and you're insured. That was "check #1" right there in front of the dripping house.
Some of you reading this may have seen homes burn down on TV or something similar. When it happens to you, the finality of it is staggering. Your forks and spoons, couches, secrets, clothes, sundries, photo albums, your history... is gone. It hits you in waves. As you think of something to go get, or use, or equip yourself with, it's gone. But that night, my father and I cashed the somewhat large check, hit the mall, locked down an arms hotel for a month, ordered food, and hunkered down with the stacks of lined paper to write down every single thing we had in the house to claim for its monetary value. My father was an honest dude, so we stuck to reality - no hacking the insurance system. This was the necessary duty to get "check #2."
The next day I went to school in my ill-fitted jeans and NGO t-shirts. I answered all the questions about the fire and, it being close to the end of the school year and time for high school, I graduated and made it through the summer. My father meantime got check #3 and ordered the contractors to finish our house by the end of summer. They did, and we moved into a brand new house on the same land and filled it with brand new stuff and, most importantly, we went absolutely crazy with new computer systems. By this time (I'm terrible with dates), I think the IBM PC AT 3½" floppy disks was the hype. The hard drive was 100 MBs, the modem was 9600 baud, and the monitor was RGB... for god sakes R...G...B!!!
I was back at it. Geeking like crazy at home, gangstering like crazy outside, and failing miserably in high school. My mother wasn't having it. She made an executive decision that I should leave Chicago and live with my ex-Marine, self-made millionaire uncle in the suburbs of Maryland to finish high school.
It was great for me. While I was there, my father got remarried, and I spent my time reading from my uncle's vast library of books and teaching myself more computer skills. The town I lived in was full of miscreant ex-pats from Brooklyn, New York, D.C., Virginia, New Jersey, and other places. We were all good/bad kids that needed a change of pace. My background was a good fit with the east coast teenagers. They believed in mental and physical fitness, knowledge of self and being generally a civilized being... with some super rough edges. After a couple scuffles, I was accepted as the Chicago kid. Country as hell to them, but cool.
I got great grades, lost lots of weight, started a videography business, and grew mentally. But there was one problem. Because of my utter failure in gaining credits back in Chicago, the school wanted me to graduate a year late. Class of 1991? Not an option. I was in the class of 1990. Period. My uncle understood, and I dropped out and got my GED and attended University back in Chicago. The same university my father worked for on the medical center side. So while I hacked my high school graduation with a General Education Diploma, my father's clout hacked my college acceptance. I was in.
It was 1991 and the Internet was becoming ubiquitous to those in the geek set, and to normies email and instant messaging were the killer apps. I did a couple years and dropped out from party exhaustion and, to be quite honest, I missed the streets. This section I will redact because I was older, nowhere near as smart as I thought I was, and the middle-1990s were crazy. Let's keep it at that. I eventually went back to school and discovered they had a computer science degree offering. In 1999, I had an interview with a Fortune 100 technology company and was told by the interviewer that I didn't need the degree, I should finish the classes I was taking, and he would give me a job in his research lab. I knew what this meant: fun, freedom, and an unlimited budget. I was in.
I was having a ball. I worked for an absolute genius, and he gave me all the room I needed to explore after I handled the tasks he assigned me. I was used to this dynamic and handled it well. In the early-2000s, I worked on wireless high speed Internet, Bluetooth, touchscreen tech, and smart appliances. My boss saw this future we live in now, and let us do what we wanted and needed to create it. My boss has since passed away, but some of my fellow engineers have since formed a great company some of you may know: Ubiquiti Networks, Inc.
During my tenure, I traveled quite a bit. During my travels, I met a young lady. She was a recent hire at Microsoft. We became fast friends and she began to tell me that her previous job was at GE Capital. She was competitive and, while I bragged about hacking and tech work, she would tell me that I didn't know how to hack the most important thing... money. This got my attention.
Before long, she was teaching me how companies were built on paper: from the employer identification number; to aged shelf (not to be confused with shell) companies (companies that were formed in years past and put on the shelf to let them "age"); to financial documents and what underwriters look for; down to a corporate website and virtual phone, fax, and office services to give a company a real world presence in an emerging virtual landscape. Before long, we put together our first multi-million dollar company and began to socially engineer every creditor we knew. We were quickly getting credit lines, travel accounts and cards, auto loans, and whatever we wanted based on these shell companies.
Within a few years, we both quit our jobs and began to hack the credit system full time. We both had luxury cars and condos, six-figure corporate credit cards, and a money supply from my street connections that required everything from restaurant furniture at 50 percent on the dollar to farm equipment. We would take a little and pay our bills, and travel and have fun with the rest. I thought I was the smartest guy in the world while simultaneously knowing I wasn't.
In 2004, at the height of my powers, my mother, father, and one of my best friends all died within 60 days of each other. Liver failure, lung cancer, and murder by police respectively. I was silently devastated. I did what I could to help bury them and help their other survivors, and put my nose to the grindstone to make as much as I could and get out of the game.
By 2008, we had built a network of shell companies that did business with one another like a pyramid. At the top was me. One day, when I was picking up a truckload of electronics from a location I used for such things, I was quickly surrounded by federal agents. They identified themselves as members of the U.S. Postal Service, Secret Service, and Chicago Vice. I was charged with theft and questioned. I kept quiet and was let go, but the jig was up.
My federal case was hard to indict because the place they interrogated me was being exposed publicly for being an inmate torture site (the feds wanted nothing of this), and I had an all female staff (no male voice, or handwriting, or witness recall) that was pretty stoic. Soon though, the feds kicked in my home door, guns drawn, to find loot and weapons I had for home protection and gave me a state case for them. They seized, froze, and demanded all I had. The federal investigation ripped through my money until I was in tatters, and the state case lingered like a gray cloud over my remaining pennies and self-made hell.
My state case went on for three years. During this time, I started a business consulting firm helping people to put together legal companies with the skills I acquired in the fast life. During this time in 2010, I kept my eyes and ears to the street. And the word on the geek streets at this time was Bitcoin (the code). I was sucked in instantly.
I thought to myself, now this is how you hack money.
Over time, I began to mine and acquire and see the elegance in the code for what it was. I was also broke and in a unique position to see my future with a money that was unconfiscatable if I was careful.
In 2011, I was sentenced to the minimum three years for unlawful possession of a weapon and had to do half of that. During my time in prison, I taught GED classes, wrote a patent for music streaming, and read The Best of 2600 (*wink*). Upon my release in October 2012, I came home to a few bitcoin (the money) on an Apple Time Machine drive and submersed myself back into the code and community. On my date of release, the exchange rate for Bitcoin with USD was around $13. Despite a few slip-ups and clown maneuvers, I have pretty much been dollar cost averaging since then. I cannot believe how far it has come. I now teach Bitcoin security and monetary policy to friends, businesses, and non-profits.
As I write this, the world is in the midst of a global financial crisis and a viral pandemic. I'm seeing many people start to crack. Some of their belief systems and trust are being broken. Their governments are printing money from thin air, and can't protect them as they once believed. This makes me feel for them... and be grateful. Grateful I can teach myself new skills with primitive tools, survive being a child of divorce, having my home burn to the ground, bury both my parents and loved one back to back to back, the streets, time in prison, and starting again with nothing. The world is in chaos at the moment. But it won't break me. I don't see chaos. I see problems to be solved collectively. I see things from a Hacker's Perspective.
Rick Swords (@rick_swords) is a Bitcoin professional and educator. Rick is now spending his time investing in Bitcoin-only startups and running a Bitcoin ATM network with the help of his daughters and young son. "It is my wish to empower all the human families with the only cryptographic money with street credibility: Bitcoin."