Miguel Morel is the founder of Arkham Intelligence, a crypto intelligence platform. Morel has a background as a technology entrepreneur with experience in strategic planning, managerial roles, recruitment, and fundraising. He also has expertise in business development across foreign markets, including East Asia, South America, West Africa, and the Middle East. ^[1][2]

Career

Reserve Protocol

Miguel Morel co-founded Reserve Protocol, a protocol focused on over-collateralized stablecoins, along with Nevin Freeman in 2017. ^[4]

Before co-founding the Reserve Protocol, Morel was connected with Paradigm Academy, an organization that offered training based on Leverage’s psychological work in exchange for a share of participants' future income. The goal was to address mental health issues and enhance effectiveness using revolutionary psychological tools. ^[4]

Freeman met Geoff Anders, a self-proclaimed philosopher and research program designer, focusing on existential risks and Connection Theory at Leverage Research. Freeman, shifting his focus from climate change, joined Leverage Research in the early 2010s. ^[4]

After high school, Morel joined Paradigm as an "entrepreneur-in-residence". The Reserve Protocol emerged from this period, as Freeman aimed to "create a currency that would outlast empires rising and falling." ^[4]

Arkham Intelligence

Morel founded Arkham Intelligence in 2020. ^[5]

In the summer of 2023, Arkham faced criticism with the launch of the Intel Exchange, a token-powered system that rewarded users with cryptocurrency for providing information to identify wallets. The platform allowed anonymous buying and selling of information related to any crypto wallet address through smart contracts. Criticism arose, labeling it a "snitch-to-earn" or "dox-to-earn" system, echoing revenue models in Web3 gaming. Concerns were voiced about potential misuse, including attacks, doxxing innocent individuals, and compromising privacy in the industry. Speculation also circulated, fueled by the platform's substantial fundraising of over $12 million and the involvement of investors like Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, both associated with data companies collaborating with the U.S. government, leading to suspicions of the Intel Exchange being a CIA project. ^[6]

"Criticism birthed by speculation about our use cases have vanished," Morel said in an interview with CoinDesk. "We've had a track record of success since going live and the Intel Exchange has proven positive for the industry as a means of incentivizing on-chain sleuths to uncover information that helps the community at large."