Michael J. Casey is Coindesk’s Chief Content Officer, an accomplished author and researcher known for his work on blockchain technology and its implications for the global economy. He is also an advisor, educator, and journalist who appears as a guest speaker at conferences and talk shows from time to time. ^[1]

Education

He graduated from John XXIII College with a high school diploma in 1984. He then attended The University of Western Australia from 1985 to 1987, where he studied business and earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree. Afterward, he pursued a graduate diploma in journalism from Curtin University in 1991. Following that, he attended Cornell University from 1993 to 1994, where he studied media in Southeast Asia and earned a Master of Arts degree in English and Asian Studies. ^[2]

Career

Michael J. Casey's career as a journalist began at The West Australian, where he worked as a journalist for three years from February 1992 to March 1995. He then joined AFX News as a reporter in 1997 for less than a year. Casey then became the bureau chief in Jakarta for AFX from April 1995 to June 1997. ^[3]

After his time with AFX, he served as a Special Writer/Editor for The Wall Street Journal from September 1997 to March 2003. During his time there, he covered a variety of topics, including global economic affairs, and served as a correspondent for the newspaper. ^[3]

In March 2003, Casey became the Bureau Chief for Argentina for The Wall Street Journal, a position he held for six years and four months. He then became a Special Writer and Columnist for the newspaper from June 2009 to November 2010, where he wrote a column on global economic affairs. ^[3]

In November 2010, Casey was appointed as the Managing Editor for Foreign Exchange, Fixed Income, and Economics for a new joint venture between Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal called DJ FX Trader. He served in this position for two years and nine months, managing coverage for foreign exchange and fixed income in the Americas. During this time, he continued to write for both Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal and was a regular commentator on the WSJ News Hub video show as well as Fox Business News. ^[3]

Wall Street Journal

He started his career as a Senior Columnist at The Wall Street Journal in July 2013, where he wrote a weekly column on global financial and economic affairs. It was around this time where he first discovered Bitcoin - in the midst of writing about macroeconomic themes - which was his first look at cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. He was also the lead and coordinating editor responsible for a published daily newsletter on economic and political developments around the world. In addition, he contributed to WSJ's Moneybeat blog and regularly hosted the morning News Hub, one of WSJ Live's daily live video shows. He held this position for two years, until July 2015. ^[3][4][5]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The same month of leaving The Wall Street Journal, Casey began working at the MIT Media Lab as a Senior Advisor for the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI), where he worked with students and faculty to explore the use of digital currency and distributed-ledger technology to finance sustainable energy. He remained in this role until the present day but now serves in a non-staff, pro-bono capacity as he focuses his attention on his current position. ^[3]

In September 2015 Casey became a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In this role, he co-taught blockchain-focused classes, seminars, and research projects to MBA and Executive MBA students. He also coordinated weekly discussions for professors, students, researchers, business people, and others from MIT and the wider Boston area who were interested in blockchain technology. He held this position for four years and four months until December 2019. ^[3]

Advisor

While still a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, Casey became an Advisor at The Agentic Group in June 2016. In this role, he helped The Agentic Group advise governments and businesses on the deployment of digital currency and blockchain technologies as a way to build the sustainable, digital economic models of the future. He was also engaged in recruiting and growing Agentic's consortium of startups and other companies that would come together in constructive, collaborative engagements to deploy that technology across multiple, interrelated applications in order to achieve those transformative goals. He held this position for three years and five months until October 2019. ^[3]

In August 2019, Casey briefly became an Advisor at Bicameral Ventures in the Toronto, Canada area. In this role, he was part of a team advising BiCameral on its "Interconnected Investment" strategy for a new fund aimed at supporting the inter-related development of Web 3.0 technologies to unlock the new trust architecture of a blockchain-, IoT-, and AI-driven, decentralized future. He helped BiCameral invest in projects building on the Aion platform with exceptional return potential and strategic value. His tenure as an Advisor at Bicameral Ventures lasted for only three months until October 2019. ^[3]

Author

Michael J. Casey has been an author since 2009 and has published five acclaimed books. His literary agent is the Gillian MacKenzie Agency. Casey's first book, "Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image," explores the cult of Alberto Korda's famous photo of Che Guevara and was one of NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani's top 10 picks in 2009. ^[6]

His second book, "The Unfair Trade: How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys The Middle Class," was published in 2012 and describes the human consequences of a dysfunctional world financial system. ^[7]

In 2015, Casey published "The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order," co-authored with Paul Vigna, which explains why we need to pay attention to bitcoin and blockchain technology. ^[8]

Casey's fourth book, "The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life," co-authored with Oliver Luckett, was published in 2016 and proposes viewing social media's disruption to our lives as a biological system. ^[9]

In 2018, Casey co-authored "The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything" with Paul Vigna, which focuses on non-currency applications for blockchain technology. In 2018, he also released a book called "The Impact of Blockchain Technology on Finance: A Catalyst for Change", which goes over the basics of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, as well as their potential impact on the financial state of the world. ^[10][11]

Consultant/Public Speaker

Michael J. Casey has been offering consultancy services in the fintech industry and public speaking engagements since July 2015. He provides guidance to senior managers and executives of various organizations, irrespective of their size, about the opportunities, implications, and challenges of blockchain technology. ^[3]

Casey leverages his extensive knowledge and connections gained during his tenure as a journalist covering the technology and the industry that surrounds it. Additionally, he has also gained employment in this sector at MIT, which is the world's premier technology research institution. ^[3]

Casey believes that blockchain technology will have an extensive and disruptive impact on our economy, with financial firms having to adapt to its presence. The consequences of this technology stretch beyond banking, payments, and credit, with lawyers, manufacturers of "Internet of Things"-connected appliances, and multinational supply-chain managers, among others, having roles that are profoundly impacted. ^[3]

As an experienced public speaker, Casey is available to present before audiences of different sizes and composition. His expertise is currently concentrated on blockchain technology and financial disruption. However, he also speaks frequently on globalization and social media. ^[3]

Blockchain Career

In September 2017, Casey joined CoinDesk as its Chief Content Officer, where he leads a team of journalists, multimedia professionals, research analysts, and event programmers in building a rapidly growing media company. CoinDesk is the leading provider of news, information, and events for the cryptocurrency, blockchain, and digital assets community. Casey also co-hosts a weekly podcast called "Money Reimagined" with Sheila Warren, where they discuss the problems influencing world economics. ^[3][12]

In February 2024, Sam Kessler and Danny Nelson of CoinDesk reported that Casey no longer has a full-time Chief Content Officer role as part of a reorganization but is in discussions with Bullish to stay on board with CoinDesk in some other capacity.^[13]

In September 2018, Casey co-founded Streambed Media, where he currently serves as Chairman. Streambed Media is building tools to help video creators stake claim to their content, track its journey across the internet, and better control how it is monetized. Casey and his team are working to empower creators and users and to chip away at the power of giant social media platforms' algorithms. ^[3]

Casey also serves as an Advisor for DeepTrust Alliance, a global network of researchers, media professionals, institutions, policymakers, and concerned citizens actively driving policy and technology to confront the threat that deepfakes pose to business, industry, and society. Additionally, he is a Founder and Advisor for the MIT-Yale Open Solar Project, which is using blockchain technology and smart contracts to enable affordable financing solutions for a solar microgrid for a school community in a low-income district of Puerto Rico. Casey started this project in July 2017, and it is still ongoing. ^[3]