**Changpeng Zhao**, popularly known as CZ, is a Chinese-Canadian serial entrepreneur. He is well known as the founder and CEO of [Binance](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance), the world's largest [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) exchange.[\[24\]](#cite-id-nokgqufrax)  
  
As an expert in blockchain and trading systems, he has developed Binance into the top blockchain ecosystem, including the Binance Exchange, Binance Labs, Binance Launchpad, Binance Academy, [Binance Charity](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance-charity), [Binance NFT](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance-nft), and more. CZ discovered bitcoin in 2013 while playing poker with his friends.[\[23\]](#cite-id-f0l2kph4m48)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](4zLsHSuQvOU)$$  
  
# Early Life & Education  
  
CZ was born on September 10, 1977, in Jiangsu province, China to his Chinese parents, who were both teachers in China. His father was a professor in China before he was branded "pro-bourgeoisie intellect" and exiled from his country. When he was 12 years old, CZ moved with his family to Vancouver, Canada where they settled.[\[24\]](#cite-id-nokgqufrax)  
  
During his teenage years, Zhao helped support his family by working several service industry jobs, including at a Chevron gas station, at McDonald’s, and as a referee at volleyball games.[\[5\]](#cite-id-pqjmrm3se2)  
  
While in Canada, CZ attended McGill University in Montreal, Canada where he earned a computer science degree.[\[6\]](#cite-id-eyci1y7qt54)  
  
# Career  
  
After college, CZ began working for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software for matching trade orders. He also worked at Bloomberg Tradebook, a developer of futures trading software. In 2005, CZ quit his role as head of the Bloomberg Tradebook Futures Research & Development team and moved to Shanghai to start Fusion Systems, known for building "some of the fastest high-frequency trading systems for brokers."[\[7\]](#cite-id-y2wats65k9n)[\[9\]](#cite-id-ibg2d2eznt)  
  
CZ learned about [Bitcoin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/bitcoin) in early 2013 while playing poker with his friends. Bitcoin then was new and CZ had no idea about it but found it to be interesting so he decided to learn more. He read the whole Bitcoin whitepaper to get more understanding of the new technology. A few months later, CZ became sure it was the future of money. He sold his entire apartment in Shanghai for $1 million which he invested all in bitcoin and also quit his job. He faced criticism from his friends and family who said he was foolish for making such a decision. Two months later, Bitcoin crashed by 70% and CZ lost over 700,000 thousand dollars.[\[27\]](#cite-id-j93rwn1r91f)  
  
Later, Zhao also worked on various cryptocurrency projects including Blockchain.com, and served as chief technology officer of [OKCoin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/okcoin).[\[8\]](#cite-id-cgkiu66993e)  
  
## Binance  
  
In 2017, CZ left [OKCoin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/okcoin) to start a [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) exchange called [Binance](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance). Its name was a combination of two words: “binary,” as in the ones and zeros of computer code, and “finance.” He launched the exchange on July 14, 2017, following a $15 million funding raised during an [initial coin offering](https://iq.wiki/wiki/initial-coin-offering).[\[10\]](#cite-id-esn2xz6jt4w)[\[11\]](#cite-id-zua8z7qhrh) By 2018, Binance had already become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, with a market cap exceeding $1.3 billion.[\[28\]](#cite-id-4gfbf4iojge)  
  
In January 2019, Binance partnered with Simplex to offer crypto purchases with a debit or credit card. In September, the company began offering perpetual futures contracts allowing for 125x leveraging on the contracts. Additionally, Binance.us was launched in nearly all of the United States.[\[28\]](#cite-id-4gfbf4iojge)  
  
In September 2020, the company launched BNB Chain.[\[28\]](#cite-id-4gfbf4iojge)  
  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](_8R0IlvruAk)$$  
  
# Awards & Recognition  
  
In 2018, Zhao was the nominee for Golden Token Awards and ended up being the 2018 CEO of the Year. His crypto exchange [Binance](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance) also won the Best in Trading/DEX award.[\[17\]](#cite-id-epn0mg49eyn)  
  
In 2020, CZ was recognized in the Bloomberg 50 as one of the most influential people of the year. He commented:  
  
> “I am humbled and honored to be part of this group of remarkable people who are shaping our world for the better. Alongside these committed and passionate leaders bringing change across diverse spheres, we will continue to work towards increasing financial inclusion globally with crypto as the fundamental means and putting people and our users first.”[\[26\]](#cite-id-sai6mhk2ht)  
  
# Investments  
  
According to Bloomberg, Binance has so far invested $325 million in 67 projects this year. The spending for 2022 could exceed $1 billion. He made a $200 million investment in Forbes and a $500 million in equity funding as part of a $7 billion financing pledge to support Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.[\[29\]](#cite-id-ev7lb63f7u4)  
  
As the major head of Binance Lab, In June 2022, [Binance Labs](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance-labs), the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, Closed a $500M Investment Fund to Boost [Blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain), Web3, and Value-Building Technologies. In contrast, the corporation spent $140 million on 73 different projects in 2021.[\[25\]](#cite-id-pznebp9r4lj)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](W0vEdn2jwyI)$$

Changpeng Zhao, popularly known as CZ, is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. 

Changpeng Zhao

Vitalik Buterin (born January 31, 1994) is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer primarily known as a co-founder of [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) and as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. Buterin first appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list at age 23.[\[1\]](#cite-id-hjy7tmvus9c)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](TDGq4aeevgY)$$  
  
# Personal life  
  
Buterin was born in Kolomna, Moscow Oblast, Russia, to Dmitry Buterin, a computer scientist,  and Natalia Ameline (née Chistyakova). He lived in the area until the age of six when his parents emigrated to Canada in search of better employment opportunities. While in grade three of an elementary school in Canada, Buterin was placed into a class for gifted children and started to understand that he was drawn to math, programming, and economics. He also had the ability to add three-digit numbers in his head at twice the speed of his peers.[\[10\]](#cite-id-mu5wc9ex39)  
  
![image](https://ipfs.everipedia.org/ipfs/QmXMyP7h76wEMwxMWrjaVkuBwUhWTEta9ZLjH67orsedTq)*Vitalik and his father Dima Buterin*  
  
Buterin attended the Abelard School, a private high school in Toronto, for four years, which he said, "proved to be among the most interesting and productive years of my life; the closer connection between students and teachers [&] the level of depth at which the material was taught, made me want to learn and to focus on learning as my primary goal".[\[11\]](#cite-id-7m0tcbc3kxb) Buterin has written that although he was "never particularly inspired by the traditional education system" when subjects were presented with "dedication and focus on intellectual inquiry", he said:  
  
> "I noticed my attitude and my results almost immediately and drastically change. Education is ultimately much more than simply memorizing individual facts, or even learning individual concepts. [What] matters most: learning how to think, learning how to reason, and learning how to learn."  
  
Buterin learned about [Bitcoin](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/bitcoin), from his father, at age 17. In 2012, he obtained a bronze medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics. In 2013, he visited developers in other countries who shared his enthusiasm for code. He returned to Toronto later that year and published a white paper proposing Ethereum. He attended the University of Waterloo but dropped out in 2014 when he received the Thiel Fellowship in the amount of $100,000 and went to work on [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) full-time.[\[12\]](#cite-id-akme6orfqq)  
  
On 30 November 2018, Vitalik Buterin received Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel on the occasion of the Dies Academicus.[\[12\]](#cite-id-akme6orfqq)  
  
# Career  
  
## Beginnings at *Bitcoin Magazine*  
  
Buterin met a person on a Bitcoin chat forum trying to start a bitcoin blog. The owner offered five bitcoin (about $3.50) to anyone who would write an article for him. Buterin wrote for the site until its website shut down soon thereafter due to Bitcoin's lack of mainstream attention.  
In September 2011, another person reached out to Buterin about a new publication called Bitcoin Magazine, a position which Buterin would accept as the first co-founder, and contribute as a leading writer.[\[13\]](#cite-id-qm52ux7whkr)  
  
In addition, Buterin wrote about bitcoin-related topics for other publications, including *Bitcoin Weekly*. In 2012, *Bitcoin Magazine* began publishing a print edition and has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. *Bitcoin Magazine* was then purchased by BTC Media, where Buterin continued to write until mid-2014.[\[14\]](#cite-id-eve2maxlulo)  
  
In addition, he held a position on the editorial board of Ledger, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes full-length original research articles on the subjects of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.[\[15\]](#cite-id-cv86vsl0q77)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](fi0ORZR4A88)$$  
  
## Ethereum  
  
Buterin is a co-founder and inventor of Ethereum, described as a "decentralized mining network and software development platform rolled into one" that facilitates the creation of new cryptocurrencies and programs that share a single blockchain (a cryptographic transaction ledger).[\[16\]](#cite-id-vw8jif6wtse)  
  
Buterin traveled around the world for six months in 2013 to speak with [Bitcoin](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/bitcoin) developers. He understood that he could construct a new, possibly superior version by iterating on the Bitcoin blockchain. To explain this idea, he linked Bitcoin to a calculator and a future blockchain to a smartphone and applied the same principle of improving the system's strength by making it more general-purpose to blockchain networks.[\[3\]](#cite-id-tsn93xwzooh)  
  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](tKjs8bBQ3sk)$$  
The project was publicly announced in January 2014, with the core team consisting of Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alise, Anthony Di Iorio, [Charles Hoskinson](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/charles-hoskinson), Joe Lubin, and Gavin Wood. Buterin also presented Ethereum on stage at a Bitcoin conference in Miami. A few months later, the team decided to hold an [initial coin offering](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/initial-coin-offering) (ICO) of Ether, the native token of the Ethereum network, to fund the development. Around the same time, Vitalik himself received the Thiel Fellowship grant of $100,000. The team raised more than 31,000 BTC from the sale of ETH, around $18 million at the time. The Ethereum team established the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Switzerland, which was tasked with overseeing Ethereum's open-source software development.[\[3\]](#cite-id-tsn93xwzooh)  
  
After a series of testing and bug bounty phases, in the summer of 2015 Ethereum went live.  
The first version was known as Frontier, and although it was very basic, it paved the way for digital app development.[\[2\]](#cite-id-ucb8l4rsmb9)  
  
As per one of his interviews, Buterin created Ethereum after World of Warcraft developers weakened his prized character. According to his about.me page, he played World of Warcraft from 2007 to 2010 but decided to quit after game maker Blizzard decreased the power of his "beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell."[\[4\]](#cite-id-jzyhdpoeo9)  
  
In addition, Buterin mentioned [Ethereum Name Service](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/ens) as a key part of the metaverse when it comes to digital identity:  
  
> “The Ethereum domain name service ENS is by far the most successful non-financial Ethereum application, and it can basically be compared to a decentralized phone book.”[\[6\]](#cite-id-nbqq0kovspm)  
  
## The Merge  
  
After eight years of having proof-of-work consensus, the [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) blockchain completed its shift to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus following the merge of the Mainnet and the Beacon Chain. Another key change of the Merge was a reduction in power consumption, reducing Ethereum’s energy usage by 99%. The Merge took place on September 15, 2022.[\[19\]](#cite-id-b6l0866mgju)  
  
During the Merge, Buterin joined the Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party livestream hosted by the Ethereum Foundation. When asked if he was excited about the Merge, Buterin responded that he is "absolutely excited about being exited from the proof-of-work era." He also mentioned that the transition of the network from PoW to PoS was in his plans for years:  
  
> “[It] has obviously been a dream for the Ethereum ecosystem since pretty much the beginning. We started the proof-of-stake research with that blog post on Slosher back in January 2014.”[\[20\]](#cite-id-gub48uyjdhc)  
  
After the Merge was complete, Buterin posted the following tweet:  
  
> And we finalized! Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.[\[18\]](#cite-id-i7rghefmgm)  
  
## Open Source Software  
  
Buterin has contributed as a developer to other open-source software projects. Some early examples are Kryptokit, pybitcointools, multisig.info, and btckeysplit. He also contributed to DarkWallet by Cody Wilson, Bitcoin Python libraries, and the cryptocurrency marketplace site Egora.[\[14\]](#cite-id-eve2maxlulo)  
  
## Ethereum Russia  
  
As Buterin was recognizing the economic and political relevance of the Ethereum enterprise for his native Russia, he talked shortly with Vladimir Putin on June 2nd, 2017, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) event. The president of Russia stated that he "supported the idea of establishing ties with possible Russian partners".[\[3\]](#cite-id-tsn93xwzooh)  
  
# Awards and Recognition  
  
* Thiel Fellowship Award, 2014  
* World Technology Award in the IT Software category, 2014  
* Fortune 40 under 40 list, 2016.  
* Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2018.  
* Fortune the ledger 40 under 40 list, 2018.  
* University of Basel Honorary doctorate, 2018.  
  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](GM7ehAu-pWk)$$  
  
# Philanthropy  
  
Vitalik made a donation of $763,970 worth of Ether to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2017. He also donated $2.4 million worth of Ether to the SENS Research Foundation in 2018, for research on rejuvenation biotechnologies and human life extension. A donation of $1 million worth of Ether was done by Buterin in conjunction with the Ethereum-based OmiseGO open payment platform to the GiveDirectly organization aimed at helping the poorest of poor refugees in Africa, in 2018.[\[17\]](#cite-id-78dx7knoet4)  
  
Buterin made a donation of $93,469 worth of Ether, matched by the Pineapple Fund, to the Internet Archive in 2018.[\[17\]](#cite-id-78dx7knoet4)  
  
Buterin donated $50,000 to the SENS Research Foundation in 2020. Together with Sam Bankman-Fried and Haseeb Qureshi, a total of $150,000 was donated to the SENS Research Foundation to combat aging and aging-related diseases at the choice of users of Twitter through open voting.[\[7\]](#cite-id-wr5lk8j018)  
  
In 2021, Buterin donated over $1 billion in crypto to the India Covid Relief Fund set up by Indian tech entrepreneur Sandeep Nailwal. In May, Buterin donated 50 trillion SHIB tokens in a single transaction. This donation was 5% of the coin in circulation at the time. Earlier in April, Buterin donated about $600,000 in ether and [maker](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/makerdao) tokens to the fund.[\[5\]](#cite-id-m64we5xmzj)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](BRAnj2G4iC8)$$  
Buterin donated $336 million worth of 430 trillion Dogelon Mars ($ELON) to the Methuselah Foundation, which focuses on extending the human lifespan, on May 12, 2021.[\[8\]](#cite-id-dff3t1zsfa)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](tzw7uo6TLX8)$$  
In 2022, Vitalik donated 750 ETH to Ukraine's Unchain Foundation’, which converted to about $2.5 million. The Unchain Foundation provides humanitarian assistance to Ukraine during the war. He donated another 750 ETH to Aid for Ukraine, which is a government-run incentive set up by the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation.[\[9\]](#cite-id-nc07q6ho8jo)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](VK_huOrP8RU)$$

Vitalik Buterin is the inventor of the Ethereum blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Vitalik Buterin

**Arianna Simpson** is a venture capitalist based out of San Francisco, California. She is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and was the founder and Managing Director of Autonomous Partners, a [cryptocurrency](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) hedge fund and venture capital fund.[\[1\]](#cite-id-bmynbdu4dgc)[\[2\]](#cite-id-wmcoyon3hwm)  
  
Arianna has spent her career to date in various areas of tech, with two early stage startups, Facebook, and now venture capital.[\[7\]](#cite-id-sfe4wmj2wm)  
  
# Early Life  
  
Arianna Simpson was born and raised in Milan, Italy 1991. She attended the the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with a bachelor's in International Politics and Spanish.  
  
After graduating from the Pennsylvania State University, Arianna worked at Shoptiques.com where her position was Head of Boutique Operations from 2012 to 2013. In 2013, Arianna Simpson began a position in Global Marketing Solutions for Facebook where she left her role at Facebook to join the digital asset trust and security company BitGo.[\[9\]](#cite-id-vzscs58otbr)[\[10\]](#cite-id-2omirqciag)  
  
# Education  
  
Arianna Simpson holds a bachelor's in International Politics and Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania Schreyer Honors College. [\[3\]](#cite-id-d0iu8iflj67)[\[8\]](#cite-id-obqn4hlqajq)  
  
## Hobby  
  
Arianna enjoys skiing, riding her motorcycle, and traveling as much as possible. She is currently based in San Francisco.[\[14\]](#cite-id-vh03mvo9xmq)  
  
# Career  
  
Arianna Simpson developed a strong interest in [cryptocurrencies](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) back in 2021, which is when she first started investing in [bitcoin](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/bitcoin). She started her career as Global Marketing Solutions for Facebook where she tried to convince Facebook to launch a crypto project before the company's foray into [cryptocurrencies](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) before leaving to joining BitGo as an account and project manager in 2014.  
![arianna-simpson-steven-cohen-hedge-fund-crypto-bitcoin.webp](https://ipfs.everipedia.org/ipfs/Qmbzcqwysq1sGzfMakwR99mbp9DvMdAoPEVSZmdDpdJxeZ)  
  
She was the Managing Director and founder of Autonomous Partners, a [cryptocurrency ](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency)hedge fundand venture capital fund. They are focused on investing in cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and [blockchain](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/blockchain)-based companies. She has made over 40 investments in companies including Quartzy, The Flex Company, TUSHY and Jopwell. [\[4\]](#cite-id-t9f73mu4n2)  
Simpson is an Advisor to Commonwealth Crypto. She is also an Advisor and Investor in Stork Club Fertility Benefits. Simpson has also been a Venture Partner at Crystal Towers Capital since 2015.[\[5\]](#cite-id-hw7bua5rzhp)  Simpson was previously ran sales Y Combinator-backed Shoptiques[\[6\]](#cite-id-smgy5as3kn8)  
  
In 2019, she joined Andreessen Horowitz a private American venture capital firm as a deal partner, who is now a General Partner.[\[11\]](#cite-id-fplx5q2p2ua)  
  
## Achievement  
  
After a year of joining Andreessen Horowitz as a deal partner, Simpson was made a General partner who is responsible for deploying the firm's $2.2 billion cryptocurrency fund. She first worked as an advisor and board member and became a partner at Andreessen Horowitz in 2020.  
  
The [cryptocurrency](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) and digital asset fund Andreessen Horowitz, was as of 2022 is worth $4.7 billion. With its stakes in [NFT](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/nftrade) companies like [OpenSea](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/opensea) and Dapper Labs and has had a further focus on decentralized finance, infrastructure, and gaming in the [cryptocurrency](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) industry.[\[12\]](#cite-id-qdsqcf5r3q)[\[13\]](#cite-id-wo6sy3jsg9t)[\[15\]](#cite-id-omc6jeug1r)

Arianna Simpson is a venture capitalist based out of San Francisco, California.

Arianna Simpson

Ethan Fast is currently a co-founder at Nash Exchange (NEX), a non-custodial exchange and asset management platform for [Cryptocurrency](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) and other tokens. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and has published articles in venues such as CHI, EMNLP, AAAI, and Nature. Previously, Ethan co-founded Proxino, a web analytics company.[\[1\]](#cite-id-3r8ugjll8xh)[\[2\]](#cite-id-i5g7ptrhjz8)  
  
## About  
  
Ethan Fast is a co-founder of Nash Exchange (NEX). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University where he worked at the intersection of HCI, NLP, and ML, leading more than 10 projects to publication in top venues and has published articles in leading journals, such as Nature, CHI, EMNLP, and AAAI. He is a serial startup founder and Y Combinator alumi.[\[3\]](#cite-id-lr4zxq4c3cl)  
  
Ethan Fast has also collaborated on work combining Immunology and ML, including deep learning models for MHC class II presentation (published in Nature Biotechnology) and some work in February 2020 identifying T-cell and B-cell epitopes for SARS-CoV-2.[\[4\]](#cite-id-hfcmpgxgsnl)  
  
He currently Resides San Francisco, United States America.  
  
## Education  
  
* Stanford University, PhD in Computer Science (2013 – 2018)  
* Y Combinator (2011 – 2011)  
* University of Virginia , BA in Computer Science ( 2007 – 2011)[\[4\]](#cite-id-hfcmpgxgsnl)  
  
## Experience  
  
* Co-Founder at Nash Employed on October 2017 – Present Located in Menlo Park.  
* Researcher (Other Research Collaborations )  
* Writer at Independent Projects Employed on June 2016 – Present .  
* Research Fellow at Brown Institute for Media Innovation.  
* Graduate Researcher at Stanford University Full-time , Employed on Jan 2013 – Sep 2018 .  
* Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Employed on April 2016 – Jun 2016 .  
* Founder of Proxino .  
* Research Assistant at University of Virginia , Employed on Feb 2009 – Apr 2011 .  
* Summer REU at Santa Fe Institute.[\[4\]](#cite-id-hfcmpgxgsnl)  
  
## Research  
  
During Ethan's PhD, he did research at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Programming language, and Natural language Processing. he led work on more than ten published projects, most of which involved significant systems building.[\[5\]](#cite-id-r6cpv0d4nb)  
  
## About Nash  
  
Nash is a Fintech company using [Blockchain](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/blockchain) as infrastructure for the digital finance space. The platform's products form an integrated financial services platform that is non-custodial. Nash Exchange (NEX) raised over $20 million USD in a public security token offering and over 10 million USD from leading venture capital firms.  
  
Nash is a fast and safe platform for trading and managing digital assets. It uses cross-chain state channels to allow users to interact with orderbooks at <10ms latency while remaining non-custodial.[\[4\]](#cite-id-hfcmpgxgsnl)

Ethan Fast is currently a co-founder at Nash Exchange (NEX), a non-custodial exchange and asset management platform for crypto.

Ethan Fast

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the unknown person or people who designed bitcoin and created its original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, they also devised the first blockchain database. In the process they were the first to solve the double-spending problem for digital currency. They were active in the development of bitcoin up until December 2010[\[1\]](#cite-id-ia82589d2hp)[\[2\]](#cite-id-lpnhlm48469)[\[3\]](#cite-id-fpy7k4k8pdn)[\[4\]](#cite-id-0eak33rsfabf).  
  
# History  
  
On his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto claimed to be a man living in Japan, born on 5 April 1975. However, speculation about the true identity of Nakamoto has mostly focused on a number of cryptography and computer science experts of non-Japanese escent, living in the United States and Europe. As of 24 May 2017, Nakamoto is believed to own up to roughly one million bitcoins out of the total volume of 21 million Bitcoin in circulation, with a value estimated at approximately $9 billion USD as of November 2017. He also owns an estimated one million Bitcoin Cash coins as of the hard fork on 1 August 2017 and one million Bitcoin Gold coins as of the hard fork activated 24 October 2017[\[5\]](#cite-id-xeagq0o0ck)[\[6\]](#cite-id-mss7tndv1l)[\[7\]](#cite-id-f6hiudnv4tb)[\[8\]](#cite-id-2xy2mymfal7).  
  
# Development of bitcoin  
  
In October 2008, Nakamoto published a paper on the cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com describing the bitcoin digital currency. It was titled *Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System*. In January 2009, Nakamoto released the first bitcoin software that launched the network and the first units of the bitcoin cryptocurrency, called *bitcoins*. Satoshi Nakamoto released the Version 0.1 of Bitcoin software on Sourceforge on 9 January 2009[\[9\]](#cite-id-kloagjldbt)[\[10\]](#cite-id-r1g5qgs03kj)[\[11\]](#cite-id-nndkh797o4)[\[12\]](#cite-id-u2dbvnvpkz).  
  
Nakamoto claimed that work on the writing of the code began in 2007. The inventor of bitcoin knew that due to its nature the core design would have to be able to support a broad range of transaction types. The implemented solution enabled specialized codes and data fields from the start through the use of a predicative script.  
  
Nakamoto created a website with the domain name bitcoin.org and continued to collaborate with other developers on the bitcoin software until mid-2010. Around this time, he handed over control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen, transferred several related domains to various prominent members of the bitcoin community, and stopped his involvement in the project. Until shortly before his absence and handover, Nakamoto made all modifications to the source code himself[\[13\]](#cite-id-kzlauno3h1)[\[14\]](#cite-id-habdpas434j)[\[15\]](#cite-id-gebh08uw1v7)[\[16\]](#cite-id-n4zsa447kuc).  
  
The inventor left a text message in the first mined block which reads 'The Times 3 January 2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks'. The text refers to a headline in The Times published on 3 January 2009. It is a strong indication that the first block was mined no earlier than this date. The genesis block has a timestamp of 18:15:05 GMT on 3 January 2009. This block is unlike all other blocks in that it doesn't have a previous block to reference. This required the use of custom code to mine it. Timestamps for subsequent blocks indicate that Nakamoto did not try to mine all the early blocks solely for himself.  
  
As the sole, predominant early miner the inventor was awarded bitcoin at genesis and for 10 days afterwards. Except for test transactions these remain unspent since mid anuary 2009. The public bitcoin transaction log shows that Nakamoto's known ddresses contain roughly one million bitcoin. As of 15 November 2017, this is worth over $7,239,000,000. Due to the hardfork in which Bitcoin Cash was made, creating one Bitcoin Cash for every bitcoin in circulation, he also owns roughly one million Bitcoin Cash, worth about $1 billion[\[17\]](#cite-id-6t20mtm1xk4)[\[18\]](#cite-id-ihgdqdy658)[\[19\]](#cite-id-hljxn7d8ytn)[\[20\]](#cite-id-ihdzbc3hy1h).  
  
# Characteristics and identity  
  
Nakamoto did not disclose any personal information when discussing technical matters. He provided some commentary on banking and fractional-reserve banking. On his P2P Foundation profile as of 2012, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan, but some speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his use of perfect English and his bitcoin software not being documented or labelled in Japanese[\[21\]](#cite-id-1ltrbgl9pi)[\[22\]](#cite-id-64bps7p9f7h)[\[23\]](#cite-id-kkc7bb80cl)[\[24\]](#cite-id-bpx1b94f80o).  
  
Occasional British English spelling and terminology (such as the phrase "bloody hard") in both source code comments and forum postings led to speculation that Nakamoto, or at least one individual in the consortium claiming to be him, was of Commonwealth origin.  
  
Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's bitcoin forum posts (more than 500); the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time. If Nakamoto is a single individual with conventional sleeping habits, it suggests he resided in a region using the UTC−05:00 or UTC−06:00 time offset. This includes the parts of North America that fall within the Eastern Time Zone and Central Time Zone, as well as parts of Central America, the Caribbean and South America.  
  
Satoshi’s initial email to Dai is dated 22 August 2008; the metadata for this PDF () yields as the the value - this implies 3 October 2008 or a bit over a month later, which is consistent with the local date mentioned in the Cypherpunk mailing list email. This is an earlier draft than the final draft on, which is dated or 24 March 2009; the timezone differs: -7 vs -6[\[25\]](#cite-id-q1n40wo9l9)[\[26\]](#cite-id-546cmvel2c6)[\[27\]](#cite-id-nub2gbygbo)[\[28\]](#cite-id-dewrnbvzhy).  
  
Gavin Andresen has said of Nakamoto's code: "He was a brilliant coder, but it was quirky".  
  
## Possible identities  
  
There is still doubt about the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.  
  
#### Nick Szabo  
  
In December 2013, a blogger named Skye Grey linked Nick Szabo to the Bitcoin whitepaper using a stylometric analysis. Szabo is a decentralized currency enthusiast and published a paper on "bit gold", which is considered a precursor to bitcoin. He is known to have been interested in using pseudonyms in the 1990s. In a May 2011 article, Szabo stated about the bitcoin creator: "Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai)."  
  
Detailed research by financial author Dominic Frisby provides much circumstantial evidence but, as he admits, no proof that Satoshi is Szabo. Speaking on RT's The Keiser Report , he said "I've concluded there is only one person in the whole world that has the sheer breadth but also the specificity of knowledge and it is this chap...". But Szabo has denied being Satoshi. In a July 2014 email to Frisby, he said: 'Thanks for letting me know. I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it'. Nathaniel Popper wrote in the *New York Times* that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo".  
  
#### Dorian Nakamoto  
  
In a high-profile 6 March 2014, article in the magazine Newsweek , journalist Leah McGrath Goodman identified Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a Japanese American man living in California, whose birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto, as the Nakamoto in question. Besides his name, Goodman pointed to a number of facts that circumstantially suggested he was the bitcoin inventor. Trained as a physicist at Cal Poly University in Pomona, Nakamoto worked as a systems engineer on classified defense projects and computer engineer for technology and financial information services companies. Nakamoto was laid off twice in the early 1990s and turned libertarian, according to his daughter, and encouraged her to start her own business "not under the government's thumb." In the article's seemingly biggest piece of evidence, Goodman wrote that when she asked him about bitcoin during a brief in-person interview, Nakamoto seemed to confirm his identity as the bitcoin founder by stating: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection." The article's publication led to a flurry of media interest, including reporters camping out near Dorian Nakamoto's house and briefly chasing him by car when he drove to an interview. However, during the subsequent full-length interview, Dorian Nakamoto denied all connection to bitcoin, saying he had never heard of the currency before, and that he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being about his previous work for military contractors, much of which was classified. In a reddit "ask-me-anything" interview, he claimed he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being related to his work for Citibank. Later that day, the pseudonymous Nakamoto's P2P Foundation account posted its first message in five years, stating: "I am not Dorian Nakamoto." However, it is generally believed that Nakamoto's P2P Foundation account had been hacked, and the message was not sent by him[\[29\]](#cite-id-ko3vrf7tbg)[\[30\]](#cite-id-l2bd4c8xow8)[\[31\]](#cite-id-04rze0djna89)[\[32\]](#cite-id-vzo9brio38).  
  
#### Hal Finney  
  
Hal Finney (4 May 1956 – 28 August 2014) was a pre-bitcoin cryptographic pioneer and the first person (other than Nakamoto himself) to use the software, file bug reports, and make improvements. He also lived a few blocks from Dorian Nakamoto's family home, according to Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg. Greenberg asked the writing analysis consultancy Juola & Associates to compare a sample of Finney's writing to Satoshi Nakamoto's, and they found that it was the closest resemblance they had yet come across (including the candidates suggested by *Newsweek*, *Fast Company*, *The New Yorker*, Ted Nelson and Skye Grey). Greenberg theorized that Finney may have been a ghostwriter on behalf of Nakamoto, or that he simply used his neighbor Dorian's identity as a "drop" or "patsy whose personal information is used to hide online exploits". However, after meeting Finney, seeing the emails between him and Nakamoto, his bitcoin wallet's history including the very first bitcoin transaction (from Nakamoto to him, which he forgot to pay back) and hearing his denial, Greenberg concluded Finney was telling the truth. Juola & Associates also found that Nakamoto's emails to Finney more closely resemble Nakamoto's other writings than Finney's do. Finney's fellow extropian and sometimes co-blogger Robin Hanson assigned a subjective probability of "at least" 15% that "Hal was more involved than he’s said", before further evidence suggested that was not the case[\[33\]](#cite-id-kjjxwpqbp7f)[\[34\]](#cite-id-zvmqp3vni)[\[35\]](#cite-id-3s1pk3e35ls)[\[36\]](#cite-id-pgipd694xze)[\[37\]](#cite-id-r00hb1q812).  
  
#### Craig Steven Wright  
  
On 8 December 2015, *Wired* wrote that Craig Steven Wright, an Australian former academic, "either invented bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did". Craig Wright took down his Twitter account and neither he nor his ex-wife responded to press inquiries. The same day, Gizmodo published a story with evidence obtained by a hacker who supposedly broke into Wright's email accounts, claiming that Satoshi Nakamoto was a joint pseudonym for Craig Steven Wright and computer forensics analyst David Kleiman, who died in 2013. A number of prominent bitcoin promoters remained unconvinced by the reports. Subsequent reports also raised the possibility that the evidence provided was an elaborate hoax, which *Wired* acknowledged "cast doubt" on their suggestion that Wright was Nakamoto[\[38\]](#cite-id-4w6c6uf8r9p)[\[39\]](#cite-id-jtpwr0mdi4)[\[40\]](#cite-id-bo43hmqtgdt)[\[41\]](#cite-id-hrrsp53kvc).  
  
On 9 December, only hours after *Wired* claimed Wright was Nakamoto, Wright's home in Gordon, New South Wales was raided by at least ten police officers. His business premises in Ryde, New South Wales were also searched by police. The Australian Federal Police stated they conducted searches to assist the Australian Taxation Office and that "This matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the digital currency bitcoin." According to a document released by Gizmodo alleged to be a transcript of a meeting between Wright and the ATO, he had been involved in a taxation dispute with them for several years[\[42\]](#cite-id-fpz8cp37dtn)[\[43\]](#cite-id-g8agjif7xc9)[\[44\]](#cite-id-jxw1h238y6s)[\[45\]](#cite-id-bva03igjlvm).  
  
On 2 May 2016, Craig Wright posted on his blog publicly claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto. In articles released on the same day, journalists from the BBC and The Economist stated that they saw Wright signing a message using the private key associated with the first bitcoin transaction.  Wright's claim was supported by Jon Matonis (former director of the Bitcoin Foundation) and bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen, both of whom met Wright and witnessed a similar signing demonstration.  
  
However, bitcoin developer Peter Todd said that Wright's blog post, which appeared to contain cryptographic proof, actually contained nothing of the sort. The Bitcoin Core project released a statement on Twitter saying "There is currently no publicly available cryptographic proof that anyone in particular is Bitcoin's creator." Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik agreed that evidence publicly provided by Wright does not prove anything, and security researcher Dan Kaminsky concluded Wright's claim was "intentional scammery[\[46\]](#cite-id-zk3akpn696g)[\[47\]](#cite-id-kd0b1fwhx4)[\[48\]](#cite-id-jk8htpx3i8k)[\[49\]](#cite-id-fmdhxi4wg8a)".  
  
On 4 May 2016, Wright made another post on his blog promising to publish "a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim". But the following day, he deleted all his blog posts and replaced them with a notice entitled "I'm Sorry", which read in part:  
  
> I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.  
  
In June 2016, the London Review of Books published an article by Andrew O'Hagan about the events, based on discussions with Wright and many of the other people involved in claiming the identity of Satoshi. It also reveals that the Canadian company nTrust was behind Wright's claim made in May 2016.  
  
#### Other possibilities  
  
In a 2011 article in *The New Yorker*, Joshua Davis claimed to have narrowed down the identity of Nakamoto to a number of possible individuals, including the Finnish economic sociologist Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta and Irish student Michael Clear, then a graduate student in cryptography at Trinity College Dublin. Clear strongly denied he was Nakamoto, as did Lehdonvirta.  
  
In October 2011, writing for Fast Company , investigative journalist Adam Penenberg cited circumstantial evidence suggesting Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry could be Nakamoto. They jointly filed a patent application that contained the phrase "computationally impractical to reverse" in 2008, which was also used in the bitcoin white paper by Nakamoto. The domain name bitcoin.org was registered three days after the patent was filed. All three men denied being Nakamoto when contacted by Penenberg[\[50\]](#cite-id-iwjptj9ai4r)[\[51\]](#cite-id-emvxhrrswok)[\[52\]](#cite-id-1dx0y2uft45).  
  
In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Nakamoto is really Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki. Later, an article was published in The Age newspaper that claimed that Mochizuki denied these speculations, but without attributing a source for the denial.  
  
A 2013 article, in *Vice* listed Gavin Andresen, Jed McCaleb, or a government agency as possible candidates to be Nakamoto. Dustin D. Trammell, a Texas-based security researcher, was suggested as Nakamoto, but he publicly denied it.  
  
In 2013, two Israeli mathematicians, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir, published a paper claiming a link between Nakamoto and Ross William Ulbricht. The two based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of bitcoin transactions, but later retracted their claim.  
  
Some considered Nakamoto might be a team of people; Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read the bitcoin code, said that Nakamoto could either be a "team of people" or a "genius"; Laszlo Hanyecz, a former bitcoin core developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well designed for one person.  
  
A 2017 article, published on the website CryptoCoinsNews espoused the possibility of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk being the real Satoshi, as bitcoin was written by someone with a mastery of C++, a language heavily used at SpaceX. However, it also points to sometimes negative comments by Musk towards bitcoin as well as personal struggles Musk was going through around the time bitcoin emerged[\[53\]](#cite-id-kayw2f4e3dh)[\[54\]](#cite-id-3uo1lhrfp3d).

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the unknown person or people who designed bitcoin...

Satoshi Nakamoto

Fabian Wahle is is a blockchain personality. He is the Founder at Nash Exchange (NEX), a fintech company using [blockchain](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/blockchain) as infrastructure for the digital finance space. Fabian is from Switzerland and his current location is Zürich[\[1\]](#cite-id-366aiyusixh).  
  
### Career  
  
He is a Co-Founder of Nash a company crating decentralized financial and payment service solutions located in Zurich metropolitan area, Switzerland since November 2017 till date. Fabian is also the Founder and Strategic Advisor of NEO Saint Petersburg Competence Center located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, since 2018 till date.  
  
He was the Founder and Tech Lead of Altoida, Inc. located in Houston, Texas Area, from April 2016 to September 2018; and a Doctoral Candidate and Researcher at ETH Zurich located in Zürich Area, Switzerland from April 2014 to Mar 2017.[\[2\]](#cite-id-yo0ytox3hz)[\[3\]](#cite-id-cgbutpi8zjs)[\[4\]](#cite-id-43lqhuovo3s)  
  
### Education  
  
Fabian obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Knowledge Engineering from Maastricht University in 2010.  
  
He then studied at Maastricht University from 2010 from 2013 and earned a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in Artificial intelligence.  
  
Fabian schooled at ETH Zurich from 2014 from 2017 where he obtained a Doctor of Science (PhD) degree in Technology Management, and Artificial Intelligence.  
  
### Trivia  
  
Fabian speaks Chinese, English, and German languages fluently.[\[4\]](#cite-id-43lqhuovo3s)

Fabian Wahle is a blockchain personality. He is the Founder of Nash Exchange (NEX), a fintech company using blockchain.

Fabian Wahle

**Theodor Mauritz Forselius** is a Swedish Internet entrepreneur and programmer. He co-founded [IQ.wiki](https://iq.wiki/wiki/iqwiki), formerly known as Everipedia, at the age of 20, gaining experience in digital advertising, web development, and online gaming industries in the process. [\[1\]](#cite-id-0kfcby6hpuu)  
  
# Early Life  
  
Theodor was born in Jönköping, Sweden to Bruno Forselius and Erika Forselius. When he was 11 years old he founded an online gaming community that hosted online servers for in-game franchises such as Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Minecraft. The community eventually grew into a social networking service specifically tailored to gamers. Theodor dropped out of high school to pursue the social networking idea but ended up being offered an internship at a Swedish online advertising and web development company where he began working at the age of 16. Less than a year later, Theodor landed a full-time position at NOGA where he continued working until 2014.  
  
# Career  
  
## IQ.wiki formerly Everipedia  
  
Theodor and Sam Kazemian originally met through a mutual acquaintance in 2013. But it wasn't until the summer of 2014, when Theodor was visiting Sam Kazemian at UCLA, that the two began discussing the original idea behind what would later become Everipedia. A few months later during the fall, the two decided to officially start working on the project and Theodor traveled to Los Angeles, California to pursue Everipedia full-time. During the spring of 2015, Mahbod Moghadam and Travis Moore joined as co-founders and together they raised a seed investment from Mucker Capital. In December 2017, Everipedia announced that Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger had joined the company as its new Chief Information Officer. After the announcement, Theodor was featured on the front page of WIRED alongside Larry Sanger and Travis Moore. In February 2018, it was announced that Everipedia had raised $30 million from Galaxy Digital's EOS.IO Ecosystem Fund. The news was covered in a vast number of prominent publications such as Fortune Magazine, Reuters, Business Insider, and a featured interview with Theodor in Swedish Business Magazine Dagens Industri.  
  
Since then Everipedia's vision has grown. In 2020, Everipedia launched OraQles, the leading first-party oracle service which has been used by the Associated Press to record events from US elections to the Super Bowl on Ethereum. Under Theodor Forselius's leadership, the [IQ token](https://iq.wiki/wiki/iq-token) gained new features and became multi-chain and available on [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum), [Binance Smart Chain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance-smart-chain), and [Polygon](https://iq.wiki/wiki/polygon) (formerly Matic Network) in addition to [EOS](https://iq.wiki/wiki/eos).  
  
On October 11, 2022, Everipedia rebranded as [IQ.wiki](https://iq.wiki/wiki/iqwiki) with the beta launch of the new IQ.wiki crypto encyclopedia platform on [Polygon](https://iq.wiki/wiki/polygon). After the launch of the new IQ.wiki platform, Theodor Forselius as well as CFO and COO of Everipedia [Suchet Dhindsa](https://iq.wiki/wiki/suchet-dhindsa-salvesen) transitioned over to the parent company of IQ.wiki, which is dedicated to more broadly investing in the future of knowledge.

Theodor Mauritz Forselius is a Swedish Internet entrepreneur and programmer. He co-founded IQ.wiki, formerly known as Everipedia, at the age of 20, gaining experience in digital advertising, web development, and online gaming industries in the process.

Theodor Forselius

**Charles Hoskinson** is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur, mathematician, and blockchain enthusiast. He is the founder and CEO of IOHK (Input Output) one of the world's pre-eminent [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) infrastructure research and engineering companies, which Launched Cardano in 2017.[\[1\]](#cite-id-t1hza8ixe9q)[\[2\]](#cite-id-8ehajimfrct)[\[3\]](#cite-id-imapvqtzhh)  
  
He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation's education committee and established the not-for-profit [Cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) Research Group in September 2013. His current projects focus on educating people about [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency), being an evangelist for decentralization, and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream.[\[15\]](#cite-id-2nxiefnvvbq)  
  
# Education  
  
Hoskinson attended the Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of Colorado at Boulder to study Analytic number theory before moving into cryptography via industry exposure.[\[14\]](#cite-id-la2l6q2ergb)  
  
## Personal Life  
  
Charles enjoys fishing and chess alongside a passion for functional programming, paradoxes, and building mazes. He lives in Boulder Colorado but often travels to more exotic locales.  
  
# Career  
  
![HGCF4QR2QVG7DMB6XEJB5KICI4.webp](https://ipfs.everipedia.org/ipfs/QmWqKWFUHPj7UmNndCe1ax3Beb5cVxtshhJAwmmhv3dBaj)  
Hoskinson entered the crypto space in 2013 through Invictus Innovations Inc, a company he founded with developer [Dan Larimer](https://iq.wiki/wiki/dan-larimer) to launch the [BitShares](https://iq.wiki/wiki/bitshares) network. [Bitshares](https://iq.wiki/wiki/bitshares) is a crypto platform organized as a decentralized autonomous corporation - a term that Hoskinson coined.[\[4\]](#cite-id-tkynyzvu9a)  
  
Later in 2013, Hoskinson started the Bitcoin Education Project, an online school where he met [Vitalik Buterin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/vitalik-buterin). Hoskinson joined the Ethereum founding team (one of eight founders) with [Vitalik Buterin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/vitalik-buterin) in late 2013 and left in June 2014.[\[5\]](#cite-id-8mqsi9qtyry) Following his departure from Ethereum, he took a six-month sabbatical and contemplated returning to mathematics.[\[6\]](#cite-id-nds5wx9gjdh)  
  
Later, Hoskinson was approached by former [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) colleague Jeremy Wood to form a new project called IOHK, an engineering company that builds [cryptocurrencies](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) and [blockchains](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) for corporations, government entities, and academic institutions.[\[7\]](#cite-id-hxw4apr4l7o) IOHK's key project is Cardano, a public [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) and [smart-contract](https://iq.wiki/wiki/smart-contract) platform that hosts the ADA [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency).[\[8\]](#cite-id-mz7knhzdo0a)[\[9\]](#cite-id-v2a3met08xj)  
  
In 2017, Hoskinson and IOHK sponsored research labs focusing on blockchain technology at the University of Edinburgh and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.[\[10\]](#cite-id-8nv23ywcnle)[\[11\]](#cite-id-zhev94q91km)  
  
In 2020, Hoskinson opened a [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) research project at the University of Wyoming. The collaboration involved a gift of $500,000 for the University of Wyoming to support the development of blockchain technology through the creation of a UWYO-IOHK Advanced [Blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) and Development Laboratory.[\[12\]](#cite-id-hyou8f5q3te)[\[13\]](#cite-id-z8sepwxx52)  
  
# About IOHK  
  
IOHK now Input Output, is a global engineering and technology company, providing financial services via the use of innovative peer-to-peer (p2p) networks for people who don’t have access to traditional banking.  
  
It was founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood, IOHK is one of the world's pre-eminent blockchain infrastructure research and engineering companies. We are a fully decentralized remote working organization committed to the highest principles of academic rigour and evidence-based software development. The company builds high-assurance blockchain infrastructure solutions for public, private sector, and government clients. It is also the driving force behind the decentralized and smart contract platform, Cardano.[\[16\]](#cite-id-tngc1tievea)

Charles Hoskinson is the founder and CEO of IOHK (Input Output) the Company which Launched Cardano in 2017.

Charles Hoskinson

**Sandeep Nailwal** is an Indian entrepreneur, software developer, and co-founder of [Polygon](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/polygon). Nailwal is also the founder of India's Crypto Covid Relief Fund and Scopeweaver which is India's largest marketplace for professional service.[\[1\]](#cite-id-v95nyhnt1e)[\[19\]](#cite-id-jf2dnxcplvb)  
  
# Education  
  
At the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (Nitie), one of the best universities in India, Nailwal majored in computer science and earned his MBA with a focus on information technology in 2014. Sandeep then served as the director of technology at Welspun, the biggest textile business in Asia, and as a consultant for Deloitte.[\[2\]](#cite-id-qmrr4a9xv9f)  
  
# Personal  
  
![52038491_10205899233476045_7763631219811549184_n.jpg](https://ipfs.everipedia.org/ipfs/QmXaiAg9CCfjCEfY4fpgaRJHwAb5JCiKuDkfBQKaTiRCxd)Sandeep is currently located in Dubai, supported by a team of more than 400 individuals spread across India, Dubai, Asia, the USA, and Europe. Sandeep's day-to-day activities at Polygon include branding, marketing, adoption, and operations. He also collaborates with important stakeholders to advance the company's goal. Sandeep is eager to carry on building the [Polygon](https://iq.wiki/wiki/polygon) ecosystem with the goal of making cryptocurrency accessible to everybody, supported by a solid team.[\[20\]](#cite-id-hzb3uhmv1ht)  
  
# Career  
  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](0PPE9jXgnUE)$$In 2010, Sandeep started working at Computer Sciences Corporation as a software developer. In 2014, the software engineer subsequently started working as a consultant for Deloitte, where he handled program management and management consulting. The Delhi-based co-founder later served as the Head of Technology and Supply Chain for Welspun Group from 2015 to 2016.  
Sandeep's background in technology laid the groundwork for the 2015 launch of ScopeWeaver, the biggest professional services marketplace in India. He created and constructed a [decentralized application](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentralized-application) architecture based on a blockchain here. Sandeep found that there was no going back once he dipped his toes into the realm of web3. Sandeep immersed himself in literature, reading all he could find about blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other cutting-edge topics. Only two years later, in 2017, Sandeep, Jaynti Kanani, and Anurag Arjun came together to create Polygon with a shared vision for the future of [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) technology.[\[3\]](#cite-id-5kk3yeuzhjn) Then in October 2017, he developed an interest in [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) and artificial intelligence, the entrepreneur served as the company's CEO. In 2017, he later rose to the position of Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of [Polygon](https://iq.wiki/wiki/polygon) Technology.[\[4\]](#cite-id-3evpwlwzgsg)[\[5\]](#cite-id-lrx9euykxd)  
  
## Polygon (formerly Matic)  
  
In an interview with Mint, Nailwal said regarding the beginnings of Matic:  
  
> My co-founders and I came up with the proof of concept in 2017. By April 2018, we set up the company and raised some small funds from friends and family and started building the product. That round was just $150,000. After that, we did another small round of around $500,000. After that, we did an initial exchange offering with Binance, where we raised $5 million. In the initial few years, I started building the ecosystem in India. The whole environment around cryptocurrency was unfavourable. Developers were afraid of legal hassles. You see, we are a tech platform, and we don’t build apps ourselves. People build apps on top of our platform. Community building is thus very important. [\[6\]](#cite-id-xmtwe2uv5p)  
  
On February 9, 2021, Matic announced its expansion as Polygon.[\[7\]](#cite-id-lkmr0cqnasq)  Nailwal told CoinDesk about the reasoning behind the reinvention of the protocol:  
  
> So, basically, with Matic Network we were doing one particular scaling approach, which was Plasma. We were onboarding hundreds of dapps, working with small DeFi (decentralized finance) builders, NFT (non-fungible token) application builders, games, enterprises – a large number of teams – when we realized there was no one solution-fits-all. Secondly, we also definitely believe that Ethereum is going to be the ultimate, fundamental settlement layer of this Web3 internet. So instead of providing one type of scaling solution on top of Ethereum, we should provide a suite of scalability solutions for developers to choose what they really want. If you take AWS (Amazon Web Services), they allow developers to choose between Linux, Windows, other kinds of servers. You’re free to choose. We wanted to do the same for decentralized, execution platforms.  
  
Lately, [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain) aficionados have been buzzing about Polygon, a layer-two network created for scalability and application infrastructure development on Ethereum. The network's momentum is continuing, as seen by its $1 billion investment in zero-knowledge technology, co-launch of a $200 million Web3 social media venture, and integration with Opera's web browser to make its [decentralized apps](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentralized-application) available to 80 million Android mobile users.  
But relationships and commerce aside, many blockchain engineers are also interested in the network because to its technological capabilities, especially when compared to Ethereum.All Ethereum-based decentralized finance apps now utilize Polygon. The bulk of well-known DApps, like [Uniswap](https://iq.wiki/wiki/uniswap), [Aave](https://iq.wiki/wiki/aave), [Decentraland](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentraland), etc., include polygon technology. The locked TVL over the bridges is reportedly between $5 billion and $6 billion.  
On May 19, 2021, Business Insider India reported that the market capitalization of the MATIC token was "just under $13 billion."  On May 25, 2021, CoinTelegraph reported that billionaire and owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban became an official supporter of Polygon. Polygon was listed on the Mark Cuban Companies website. [\[8\]](#cite-id-n4thpxcj89)[\[9\]](#cite-id-e9nahc5usra)[\[10\]](#cite-id-xdhxaqueu3p)  
  
# Trivia  
  
As a crypto millionaire, Sandeep Nailwal has made about 30 investments. Sandeep Nailwal contributed $7 million to Mana Interactive on December 16, 2021.  
  
## COVID Relief Fund  
  
On April 24, 2021, Sandeep disclosed his intentions to launch a Coronavirus (COVID-19) healing campaign for India. The result of the global crypto community coming together to help India fight COVID19 and stay ready for any breakouts is Crypto Relief.  
According to a CoinTelegraph report from April 2021, the [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) community's efforts helped Sandeep's relief fund gather more than $2.2 million. Additionally, on May 5, 2021, the developer tweeted that a fund volunteer had obtained donations of more than 3,000 oxygen cylinders for India.[\[11\]](#cite-id-r8menstx0kq)[\[12\]](#cite-id-jx6t9ff31wi) Forbes reports that on May 12, 2021, [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) co-creator [Vitalik Buterin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/vitalik-buterin) donated over $1 billion in cryptocurrencies to Sandeep's relief fund.[\[13\]](#cite-id-va7xqqpsqbk)[\[14\]](#cite-id-ai4248xb148)  
The fund's singular focus is to reduce the immediate suffering of Indian citizens, which the charity accomplishes by:  
  
* Connecting those in need to the verified sources of aid.  
* Sourcing essential supplies and equipment from across the globe and providing them to overwhelmed and under-resourced facilities.  
* Setting up oxygen plants and dedicated COVID centers in remote and underserved areas of the nation.[\[15\]](#cite-id-kl0id74kwe)[\[16\]](#cite-id-jcah92nnes)[\[17\]](#cite-id-0nddzk7zlmom)  
  
# Symbolic Capital  
  
![Sandeep-Nailwal-Symbolic-Capital.png](https://ipfs.everipedia.org/ipfs/QmVExKEWA3XQDpchQLKgNrohW5TGqTgD3r8hL8FfBXAbbH)Sandeep Nailwal, the creator of Polygon and a [cryptocurrency](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cryptocurrency) entrepreneur, has garnered $50 million for a new startup fund aimed at Web3 firms, demonstrating venture capital's rising interest in the internet powered by blockchain.  
According to information released by Symbolic Capital on Thursday, Nailwal's venture firm is supported by cryptocurrency exchanges, protocols, and auditing companies that specialize in cryptocurrencies. Three blockchain-focused gaming firms, BlinkMoon, Planet Mojo, and Community Gaming, have already received funding from Symbolic's fund. These startups' early funding sources were kept secret.  
Nailwal stated that his organization is focused on assisting project creators from emerging countries, which may be a novel approach to venture capital.[\[21\]](#cite-id-923hmgjwu2)  
Similar to other crypto-focused venture capital firms, Symbolic Capital places a strong emphasis on Web3 initiatives or products that will improve the decentralized internet.

Sandeep Nailwal is an Indian entrepreneur, software developer, and founder of Polygon.

Sandeep Nailwal

Fred Ehrsam is Co-founder of [Coinbase](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/coinbase). He was previously a trader at Goldman Sachs.[\[1\]](#cite-id-2ulwwkpi16y)[\[2\]](#cite-id-i3mrwcs0jfm)  
  
## Career  
  
From 2010 to 2012, Fred was a trader at Goldman Sachs. In 2012, he became the Co-founder of Coinbase. From 2017 and until now, he has been serving on the board of directors of the company. In 2018, Fred became the Co-founder of Paradigm.[\[3\]](#cite-id-rmpik2swas)[\[4\]](#cite-id-58zot8ociny)  
  
* Fred Ehrsam founded [cryptocurrency](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) exchange Coinbase in 2012 with Brian Armstrong. It has since grown into the largest U.S. crypto brokerage.  
* Ehrsam left the company in 2017 but remains on the board and still owns about 6% of its stock; Coinbase went public in 2021.  
* In 2018, he cofounded Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment firm with more than $1 billion in assets.  
* Ehrsam graduated from Duke and worked as a foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs for two years before starting Coinbase.  
* Growing up, he played thousands of hours of World of Warcraft, where he first learned about the concept of in-game digital currencies.  
  
## Education  
  
Fred holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University.

Fred Ehrsam is Co-founder of Coinbase. He was previously a trader at Goldman Sachs.

Fred Ehrsam

Henry Chua is a co-founder at Switcheo Network and works as the Chief operating officer. Chua is also the Director of Conjur Technologies Pte Ltd , and was once a Software Engineer at Bumbox Logistics.[\[1\]](#cite-id-kmfjoq7syuc)  
  
## Education  
  
In 2011, Henry Chua attended the National University of Singapore, where he studied for a Bachelor of Engineering degree (B.Eng.) in Computer Engineering and graduated in 2015.[\[4\]](#cite-id-r8o78nc4xwf)  
  
## Career  
  
Henry Chua began his career pursuit whilst he was in his university.  
  
#### Bumbox Logistics:  
  
In 2014, when he was speculatively in his penultimate-final year in the university, Henry Chua worked with Bumbox Logistics as a Software Engineer . Bumbox Logistics is a logistics solution-giving company located in Singapore. The aim of this company is to mitigate physical mail delivery failures for parcels by providing pay-per-use storage lockers at convenient locations. Whilst Henry was here, he was in charge of software engineering and product management s and he saw to technological stack, which includes multiple consumer mobile apps (iOS, Android), web applications, API interfaces for merchant integrations, and he remotely controlled smart boxes/lockers deployed at multiple locations. Henry worked with Bumbox till May 2015.  
  
#### Payboy Pte Ltd  
  
Having completed his degree in 2015, Henry resumed duty with Payboy Pte Ltd in January 2016 as Chief Technology officer , a work he will be committed to for the next two years and six months. Payboy is a cloud-based HR solution that intends to dominate the Singapore market by providing a superb user experience even for non-technical users. Whilst he was with Payboy, he functions in several capacities which include being in charge of reliability engineering, managing hiring, helping in the development of the Payboy's web application, assisting in the development of the Payboy's mobile application, and also developing and maintaining Payboy’s web infrastructure.  
  
In June 2018, Henry left Payboy Pte to focus on Conjur technologies and eventually co-founded Switcheo in the process.  
  
#### Conjur Technologies Pte Ltd  
  
Henry Chua had been into Conjur Technologies since 2015, when he was about to or, had most likely just concluded his degree in the university. Conjur Technologies is also a software solutions company. He has been the director of Conjur Technologies from 2015 to date.  
  
At Conjur Tech, henry develops and does research on [blockchain](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/blockchain)-related solutions. He also manages the consultancy aspects of the firm and has reportedly delivered over 10 projects to clients from various industries.  
  
#### Switcheo Network  
  
Henry Chua became a co-founder for Switcheo Network. Switcheo is a non-custodial [cryptocurrency](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/cryptocurrency) network exchange built on multiple blockchains. The network supports the trading of digital assets on Ethereum, [EOS](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/eos), and [NEO](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/neo) blockchains. In Switcheo, Henry Chua is involved in developing core off-chain services and frontend user interface, and he is also involved in developing NEO [Smart contracts](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/smart-contract), blockchain services, and involved in core operations and campaigns.  
  
## Social media  
  
Henry Chua is having accounts on Linkedin and GitHub.[\[2\]](#cite-id-hvpu1peiasi)[\[3\]](#cite-id-n5t9lcq8rui)

Henry Chua is a co-founder at Switcheo Network and works as the Chief operating officer.

Henry Chua

**Alexey Koloskov** is Orion Protocol’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, with extensive experience spanning the two worlds of traditional finance and [DeFi](https://beta.everipedia.org/wiki/defi). He started his journey in the crypto space in 2016 as Chief Architect and Creator of the Waves DEX (now @waves.exchange) – the most successful decentralized exchange to date.[\[1\]](#cite-id-lhhz7de639)[\[2\]](#cite-id-v6ll1km9ge8)  
  
# About  
  
Alexey is a Blockchain developer and the chief architect and creator of the Waves Decentralized Exchange (Waves’ DEX). He has extensive experience in the development and management of complex banking software and in managing large-scale IT projects.  
  
Over the past several years he has established a reputation as an active and expert participant within the Blockchain development community. His work in Blockchain development and exchange implementation provides ORION with unparalleled expertise and insight.  
  
Prior to this, Alexey spent years creating software for some of the largest international banks (including Deutsche Bank and UniCredit).[\[3\]](#cite-id-wvdsx4fd18s)  
  
# Education  
  
Alexey Koloskov Studied at the Moscow State University, and graduated with a Masters of Science (2000-2005).  
  
# Experience  
  
* Chief Executive Officer at Orion Protocol , Employed on Jun 2017 – Present.  
* Blockchain developer and the chief architect at Waves Platform , Employed on Aug 2016 – Nov 2019.  
* Lead IT Project Manager at UniCredit Bank Russia Employed on October 2014 – Aug 2016.  
* Chief Engineer at Sberbank of Russia-Technology , Employed on Sep 2011 – Oct 2014.[\[4\]](#cite-id-gsrgng7zdsv)  
  
# Skills & endorsements  
  
* Scala  
* Cryptocurrencies  
* Decentralized Exchanges[\[5\]](#cite-id-f8oj0gld2si)  
  
# About Orion Protocol  
  
Orion Protocol is a new kind of Blockchain trading platform that combines the best features of exchanges, brokerages, and instant trading apps. The platform is built around a liquidity aggregator connected to all major crypto exchanges, as well as its own internal Decentralized exchange, enabling users to gain the best price for their trades from a single portal.  
  
Built on the most advanced liquidity aggregator ever developed, Orion Protocol aggregates the liquidity of every single crypto exchange into one decentralized platform: providing a singular, non-custodial, gateway to the entire digital asset market.  
  
By providing access to the digital asset market in one place, we're building a protocol on which to bridge the worlds of crypto, traditional finance, and real world assets.

Alexey Koloskov is Orion Protocol’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder.

IQ.wiki

Wikis with this tag

IQ

Everipedia

Resources

Policies