I wear many hats: founder, investor, advisor, researcher, and engineer. For most of my career, I’ve been obsessed with crypto and AI, which I’ve worked on in various forms since 2011. I have an academic background in economics and machine learning.
I’m most famous for my exploits in crypto MEV, including the Salmonella attack — a honeypot contract that fooled Sandwich traders into giving me their money. I was featured on the front page of Forbes magazine, was the dominant arbitrager on all EVM blockchains for several years, and at one point had 25% of Ethereum’s hash rate running off an untested Geth fork in my personal GitHub. I no longer trade MEV because I felt like I hit a ceiling and ran out of meaningful new achievements to aim for.
I’ve also built a P2P exchange, LocalCoinSwap, which I’m very proud of, and invested my time and money in several projects that had a meaningful impact on the world, including FlashBots. Right now, I’m working on turning financial derivatives into a form of art at Euphoria, whilst messing around with controversial use cases of AI as a side hobby.
Philosophically, I am an absurdist and an accelerationist. I don’t believe life is that serious; humans have short lifespans, and nothing we do matters on a cosmic scale. I don’t care much about politics or social issues, and I have little patience for various forms of tribalism. I’m pro-freedom for society, but personally believe in showing respect and being considerate to others. I’m open-minded to those who are different to me, and my default position is to be friends with anyone I meet until they give me a good reason not to be. Feel free to say hello and chat if you see me in public or at an event — I enjoy meeting new people.
My most controversial viewpoints seem to centre around AI and speculation. I’m an AI optimist, and my p(doom) is less than 1%. I believe we need to build AI as quickly as possible, make it decentralised and accessible to all, and use it as a tool to accelerate human progress (immortality, space exploration, eliminating poverty, achieving world peace, etc). I also think that financial speculation is a good thing and, in some respects, represents the end-state of economic progress. Speculation is not a bug in capitalism; it’s a cultural game that drives risk-taking, innovation, and storytelling. I’m grateful to be alive in the modern era, and I’m excited and hopeful for the future. I reject doom, gloom, and fear-mongering.
I have a diverse range of hobbies, including skiing, surfing, golf, weight-lifting, art, literature, learning foreign languages, classic video games, cooking, coffee, fashion, design, history, climbing, poker, chess, writing, psychology, philosophy, and maths. I experiment regularly with new activities, so my pastimes constantly change.
I consider myself career- and family-oriented. I have two young sons (ages 4 and 8) from a previous relationship. They are the loves of my life and keep me sane. I had a difficult childhood, and my goal as a father is to make sure my sons grow up happy. Although their mother and I are separated, we remain good friends and support each other.
My biggest struggles in life are with anxiety. I’m not socially anxious, but I struggle a lot with existential questions like my mortality and the meaning of reality. Sometimes this is a source of immense creativity; other times, it’s debilitating. Usually, I’m able to regulate my mental health through my career, friends, family, exercise, and diet. Despite occasional struggles, I consider myself emotionally grounded and spend much of my time feeling happy and content.
For the rest of 2025, I plan to publish more personal writing across different platforms, with the goal of becoming more comfortable being publicly vulnerable. Most people won’t care, and that’s fine. But if something I’ve said resonates with you, or you’d like to discuss working together, I welcome you to reach out.