From Bitcoin to AI: My 13-Year Journey in Tech

In 2013, I stumbled across Bitcoin. Not through a finance blog or a tech conference. It was a forum post. Someone was explaining how you could send money anywhere in the world without a bank, without permission, without waiting three business days. That was it. I was hooked.

Back then, the crypto space was tiny. There were no DeFi protocols, no NFTs, no institutional investors. It was just a handful of people on the internet who believed that decentralized money could change the world. Most people thought we were crazy. Some of them still do.

I spent the first few years just learning. Reading whitepapers, running nodes, understanding how consensus mechanisms worked. I wasn't building yet. I was absorbing everything I could about this new technology. That foundation turned out to be the most valuable investment of my career.

By 2017, the ICO boom hit and suddenly everyone was paying attention to crypto. That was when I made my first angel investments. Some worked out. Most didn't. But each one taught me something about what separates projects that survive from projects that disappear when the market turns.

The bear market of 2018-2019 was the real education. The tourists left. The builders stayed. I learned that the best time to invest in crypto is when nobody wants to talk about it. The projects that kept shipping during the bear market became the blue chips of the next cycle.

In 2020, DeFi summer changed everything. Suddenly the things we had been talking about for years were real. Decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, yield farming. I went deep into advisory work, helping emerging protocols navigate the technical and strategic challenges of building in DeFi.

By 2022, I had enough conviction to start building my own companies. Vision Labs became the software development studio I wished existed when I was helping other teams build. Digital Voids became the creative agency for the brands that wanted to look as good as their technology. Something Tools became the infrastructure for token launches and trading that I kept seeing teams struggle to build from scratch.

Around 2023, I got deeply embedded in the Solana ecosystem. The speed, the cost, the developer experience, it was clear that Solana was going to be where a lot of the next wave of crypto innovation happened. I started advising protocols, helping them with strategy, fundraising, and connections.

Then came the institutional wave. Publicly traded companies started calling. Digital Asset Treasuries became a real thing. I found myself in rooms with CFOs and board members explaining how blockchain works and why their companies needed a digital asset strategy. That work took me across America, Asia, and Europe.

And now, in 2026, I find myself at another inflection point. AI agents are becoming real. Not chatbots. Not copilots. Fully autonomous systems that can own wallets, execute transactions, build software, and make decisions. The intersection of AI and crypto is the most exciting design space I have seen since I first read about Bitcoin in 2013.

Thirteen years is a long time to spend in any industry. But crypto has never felt like one industry. It keeps reinventing itself. Every few years, the entire landscape shifts and creates new opportunities for people who are paying attention.

I don't know exactly where the next thirteen years will take me. But I know it will involve building at the frontier of whatever comes next. That has always been the point.