Original title: The Genesis Story: How Crypto Found Me Original author: @hmalviya9 Original translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editor's note: @hmalviya9 recalled how he was inspired by friends from Google and MIT to create the blockchain platform Itsblockchain.com and integrate it with Digital Gorkha to build a global digital identity system. While communicating with team members Mehul and Jeet, he found it difficult for them to understand the potential of blockchain. Faced with heavy debts and a team that couldn't see the future, the author decided to leave the old project and pursue the opportunities of blockchain, ultimately choosing to let go of the past and focus on building a greater future. Blockchain became his new mission.
The following is the original content (for readability, the original content has been edited):
I turned to the teacher who had always helped me understand valuable things of the future—my teacher was Google.
Google is not just a search engine—it's the greatest teacher for anyone curious enough to know how to ask questions. If you know how to ask questions, Google can open doors that traditional education systems don't even know exist.
And you only ask the right questions when you are genuinely driven by a problem you want to solve. Not to pass an exam, not to show off, but to truly solve that problem that keeps you awake at night.
The problem I wanted to solve was simple but difficult—how could I find a technological moat for Digital Gorkha?
Not just a feature or product, but a layer of defense strong enough to excite investors even when they see our chaotic equity structure, making them willing to fund us.
I understood the game—They all came here to make money, not to do charity. But if I could show them the future we were building—a future that only we could realize—then that ugly equity structure would become just a small dent on a Ferrari.
For weeks, I had been tirelessly working day and night to improve the Digital Gorkha product. I wasn't waiting for miracles to happen—I was calling, emailing, and tracking potential clients. I successfully found two teams that had developed crazy technology in the field of mobile biometrics.
One of them even applied for a patent allowing phones to scan fingerprints and irises—this technology used to only be achievable during UIDAI's AADHAR registration events through expensive equipment.
The deal I secured means we can now deploy the same biometric capabilities globally at a lower cost—no bulky equipment, no long queues at centers. Just the smartphone in your hand.
It was then that the true vision of Digital Gorkha began to take shape in my mind:
'What if we could create a universal identity system—like AADHAR—but for the entire internet?'
We didn't need a physical center; instead, we would set up 10,000 DG devices globally, creating a million new digital identities for real people each year, ensuring security and portability. This would become a new layer of the internet—a real, verifiable digital identity.
At that moment, I realized: Digital Gorkha is not just a visitor management system. It can become a global platform for creating internet identities.
As the vision became clearer, the hardship behind it was equally brutal. I sent hundreds of emails each week, trying to build partnerships across continents. Through this effort, I secured potential clients in Mexico and Kenya. These teams liked our product idea and actively marketed it to local clients. Theoretically, our sales pipeline was being built. However, to scale this business to the next stage, I needed one thing—funding.
And to attract real funding, we needed not just a product but a vision supported by technology that others couldn't easily replicate. So I turned again to my teacher—Google—and posed a bigger question: 'How to build the world's most secure global identity system?'
At that moment, Google quietly answered me—the blockchain.
When I started to delve into blockchain, I had a sense of déjà vu. That strange feeling, as if I already knew this thing.
Then, suddenly, it became clear—Bitcoin.
I remembered the days in college when we frantically tried various things in a small apartment in Jalandhar with an Alienware laptop. At that time, my friend helped me mine a few bitcoins, and bitcoin was very cheap then, almost worthless.
But at the same time, I suffered significant losses due to a scam called Liberty Reserve, and I foolishly thought Bitcoin was also a scam, so I quickly gave up.
The last price I saw for Bitcoin was $50, and now, when I looked again, it had risen to $400.
I sat there, staring at the screen, starting to blame myself for not having enough curiosity at the time. If I had just trusted my instincts and learned a bit more, my life might be completely different now.
But that regret only lasted a few minutes.
Because soon I realized—'This time, you are still early.'
I realized blockchain was still in its early stages, and this was the moment for me to step ahead again and seize the opportunity—just like during the hacker era, like early blogs, like every wave I had previously caught.
Getting one step ahead, learning something the world wouldn't realize for years, seemed to have become part of my DNA.
I know that the best way to master a technology is to learn and share.
Because when you teach others, you learn better yourself, ten times better.
I wasted no time, opened GoDaddy, and began searching for a domain name that included the word 'blockchain'. After an hour of searching, I found it—Itsblockchain.com.
I immediately reserved the domain name, created Twitter and Facebook pages, and decided: I would start writing down everything I learned.
Not as a professional blogger, but as a curious person sharing what he was figuring out—with the world.
At the same time, I knew I needed technical strength to truly integrate blockchain into Digital Gorkha. So, I called Rish, my old friend, who was studying at MIT at the time—probably the smartest mind I could reach.
When I brought up this idea to him, he was immediately excited. We decided not only to write articles about blockchain but also to co-found Itsblockchain.com together, starting to build a global blockchain community in India—this all happened when others didn't even understand what blockchain really meant.
Rish also provided me with immense technical support. He crafted a detailed architecture for a blockchain-based universal identity system tailored for our product. I quickly integrated it into my presentation for potential investors. Now, when I pitched Digital Gorkha, it was no longer just a boring visitor management system—it was an entry point to a globally secured digital identity powered by blockchain.
Everything started to make sense—except for the people around me.
Mehul and Jeet couldn't understand at all. They were still stuck in the mindset of franchising and local transactions. For them, blockchain was just 'extra work'—not a transformative opportunity.
I tried to explain: 'We are already recording verified visitor data every day. With biometrics, we have a real opportunity to build a decentralized identity network!' But that was like explaining the internet to someone still stuck in the fax machine era.
It wasn't their fault either. In 2016, blockchain was indeed too early. Most people hadn't even heard of it. Even fewer could understand how it would permanently change the internet. In those frustrating moments, I realized something powerful—I was on a sinking ship.
The debt of 500,000 rupees was suffocating us. A team that couldn't see the future.
And there were only 2 months left before everything collapsed.
I faced a choice: stay on the sinking ship out of loyalty, or start building a new ship to embrace the person I was becoming—the one ready to create something greater than myself.
As I delved deep within, the answer became clear: blockchain is now my mission.
I had to keep moving forward. I had to leave the old chaos behind and put everything into building a future venture, so I would never miss an opportunity out of fear or ignorance again.
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