I am a “second-generation dev”: my father happily coded ALGOL 60 on a Zuse Z 23 and punched cards were my toys before I knew what they were for. I’ve been called a thought leader in the blockchain space, and I guess my reputation officially is that I keep things honest (which, of course, is not a compliment.) I was IBM’s Mr blockchain a while back, giving talks about it when no one at IBM dared touching the hot topic yet and I designed the architecture of IBM’s Open Blockchain that later became Hyperledger Fabric.
I ran into the Ethereum people when they first set up shop in Berlin, while working on my Bitcoin prediction market startup, a forerunner of the Lexon Hub. I later wrote the first book on Ethereum – a #1 bestseller on Amazon! – to educate non-technical experts about a blockchain’s inner workings.
As a consultant I helped the European Commission’s Finance Directorate und a Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund to cut through the hype to identify the existing, technically viable options to implement smart contract-based products. As director for blockchain at the Boston Consulting Group, Digital Ventures, I lead the research to create the privacy-respecting Diamond chain TRACR for Anglo American’s DeBeers.
Before blockchain I worked as system architect and coder in mobile payment, distributed databases, functional languages and computer language design: all areas which figure heavily in blockchain technology today. I have professionally used close to two dozen different programming languages to date and I created one for the insurance industry that became a de facto standard. Now I am creating one for smart contracts.
I gave keynotes and talks on all inhabited continents and at prestigious schools. Some people say they love my books. The latest is on Lexon, a language for smart contracts for non-programmers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/169774768X.
