Sam Reed, 29, is co-founder and chief technology officer of the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX), the largest crypto trading platform, and the 26th-largest exchange of any type in the world.
His story — of how he went from itinerant web developer to co-founder of what some have called the ‘Goldman Sachs of bitcoin’ — is both inspiring and a bit jealousy-inducing. Living, he says, a relatively quiet life in Hong Kong in 2014 after trying, and failing, to launch a series of internet start-ups (‘I was doing a ticketing start-up to compete with Ticketmaster, which is kind of a dumb thing to do’), he started giving workshops and presentations to aspiring web developers.
One of these presentations changed his life. ‘I was telling these young graduates they could pretty much get a high-paying job if they had a pulse,’ he says. ‘There’s just so much demand for web developers. Everyone needs one.
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