Diogo Monica is a Portuguese-American Entrepreneur and Engineer who is the co-founder of Anchorage Digital, a cryptocurrency and digital asset platform headquartered in the United States. He is also a General Partner at Haun Ventures and Chairman at NEAR Foundation. ^[1][2]

Education

Monica earned three degrees - BSc in Communication Networks Engineering, MSc in Communication Networks Engineering, and a PhD, in Computer Science, Network Security from Instituto Superior Técnico. ^[1]

Career

Diogo Monica began his career as a Platform Security Lead at Square Inc. (now Block) in April 2011. While working at Square, Mónica identified an issue with the online reservation service, OpenTable, that let users create bots to reserve tables as soon as a reservation became available. He also wrote code that would allow other users to do the same, publishing the code and his findings on his eponymous blog. ^[3]

In 2015, Mónica left Square to become the Security Lead at the software company, Docker Inc. Throughout his time at Square and Docker, he was also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, chairing the institute's Public Visibility Committee for a time. ^[1]

In November 2017, he co-founded the digital asset platform Anchorage Digital with Nathan McCauley, whom he had met while working at Square. Mónica is an Executive Chairman at Anchorage, which has the first federally chartered cryptocurrency bank in the United States and received a valuation of over $3 billion in 2021. ^[1]

He is an Advisor for several companies including Airtable, StackRox, and Jscrambler. In March 2024, he joined Haun Ventures as a General Partner. ^[5]

"I've invested in over 100 companies as an angel investor, and now want to professionalize what's been a side hustle," Mónica explains.
"I don't think of it as leaving Anchorage, because I'll still be helping the team on things like strategy and hiring executives." - Monica said during his appointment^[5]

NEAR Foundation Council

In October 2023, Monica was appointed a member of the NEAR Foundation Council (NFC). The NEAR Foundation Council (NFC) is the governing body of the NEAR Foundation (NF) (similar to a board of directors) which is responsible for ultimate control and oversight of NF and for making significant decisions for the organization. ^[4]

The NFC is separate from the NF’s executive team, which is empowered by the NFC to manage the NF’s day-to-day operations and reports back to the NFC (and seeks NFC approval where necessary for significant decisions). ^[4]