Holy cow! I am a notable individual!

4 min readDec 5, 2021

True, I am in the decentralization and cryptography space since before bitcoin and the blockchain, and I been lucky enough to be in the right place and the right moment when all this started to become popular with bitcoin. I have built quite a reputation, but I never understood how “notable” that makes me.

Here is the (funny) story. UnstoppableDomains is a new service that sell domain names for crypto use. The domains are registered in the blockchain, no renewal fee, just a one off payment. I own “capodieci.com” and dot many other things. Most social media accounts that I own are @capodieci and this has become a bit my brand.

I went to unstoppabledomains.com and started shopping for interesting domain names. To avoid squatting (the action to buy a domain that belongs to someone known or a famous brand, to resell it to them for a profit, or keeping it for personal gain), most company that sell domain names protect those domains so nobody takes them instead of the legitimate owner.

For example if I try to register cocacola in unstoppable domain, I get this:

Same thing if I try to register someone famous name (or infamous lol):

Now, this registrar is specialized on the cryptocurrency / blockchain industry. I am sure they gave more attention to names in this industry. Everyone that knows cryptocurrencies knows Ethereum, and his creator: Vitalik Buterin.

If I try to register Vitalik (just his name) I see the domains are protected:

Just to give a simple example, a very common name such as John, is available to be registered (even tho it is quite expensive):

I so went and try to register my domain before someone else takes it. There are a few other capodieci that are into IT, and sometime we compete in catching the first available capodieci account in various services. I went, and did my action to register it, but for my surprise…

I found “capodieci” to be protected! Could be because of me? Ah, before my ego start inflating, I made a simple test, and checked if Roberto was also protected. And it is not:

Ok, so it must be not me. Let se if robertocapodieci is available…

Oh wow. It is protected! Is it because it contains the word “capodieci”, or they really protected the domains for me? So, let’s try johncapodieci:

Oh, wow! It is available! So they really protected my personal brand! lol

So I went on to try many other names, outside the crypto world, and it is interesting on various fields ho they protected and who they didn’t. If any of you is a fan of MotoGP, check this out:

while

hahahahahaha :D

And while I am writing this shameful self glorification post, I got this notification from LinkedIn:

I mean, you all know Brett King. Like a superstar in the finance, bank, and fintech world. An idol, and out of the blue he writes this recommendation. This pumped my ego even more. I can start selling autographs lol

But hey, now I need to see what Unstoppable Domains thinks of him: