philanthropist
product development advisor
seed investor
сrypto-economic builder
philanthropist
product development advisor
seed investor
сrypto-economic builder
philanthropist
product development advisor
seed investor
сrypto-economic builder
Somehow I lucked out when I learned about Satoshi and the Bitcoin white paper in 2012.
Eventually, it led me to New York, where I volunteered at the NYC Bitcoin Center
NYC Bitcoin Center, located right next to the New York Stock Exchange.
I spent most of 2013-14 evangelizing Bitcoin and meeting interesting people, like Joseph Lubin and Ashley Taylor, who introduced me to a new project called ConsenSys.
I was able to join ConsenSys in early 2015 and then spent the next 7 years working on building the Ethereum ecosystem
Along the way, I made some lifelong friends, like my brother from another mother and Polygon founder, Mihailo Bjelic. I turned a new page and began my tenure at Polygon in early 2021.
Likewise, I met Fereshteh Forough in 2014 when we traveled together from New York to the 2014 Bitcoin in the Beltway conference in Washington DC.
I learned about her story as an Afghan refugee from the Soviet invasion who grew up in Iran and later earned a master's degree in computer science from the Technical University in Berlin. She returned to Afghanistan to teach but was forced to flee due to attempts on her life by the Taliban, so she came to the US as a refugee.
Сode to Inspire’s students learn how to code
Since then, I have had the great honor of helping her establish Code to Inspire, the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan.
To date, we’ve put nearly 300 girls through our program where we teach them how to code and then help them find jobs as freelancers or remote workers.
We also pay the girls with BTC or ETH as it is very hard for women to have bank accounts in Afghanistan, but they can safely, securely, and privately receive payment on the blockchain.
We partner with corporations like Google, Github, PwC, startups like ConsenSys, Cellarius, and others
So when girls graduate from our coding academy, these private sector partners offer them jobs like web design, mobile app design, back-end, project management, etc.
I will be matching donations up to $100k from ETHCC attendees, so please consider a donation
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Our ETH account has not changed since 2017 and is labeled on Etherscan
I work with Human Longevity in San Diego for early-stage cancer and other disease detection to ensure all of our founders have a very good preventative healthcare approach
If you test routinely, then you are far more likely to detect early and therefore far more likely to survive any potential cancer or other medical ailments. I encourage and help support all of my portfolio companies to pay them a visit to Human Longevity Clinics.