Basecoin
A Robust, Price-Stable Cryptocurrency with an Algorithmic Central Bank
The Basecoin project is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Libertus Capital, PolyChain Capital, Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, 1confirmation, and MetaStable Capital.
The 3 founders have backgrounds from D. E. Shaw & Co. Quantitative Strategies, Google Search, Google Ads, and Princeton University, where they all graduated summa cum laude in Computer Science.
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Founding Team
Nader Al-Naji
- Nader has a background in finance and software engineering. He's worked at D. E. Shaw & Co. in equities high-frequency trading, as well as in Google Search and Google Ads.
- Nader became obsessed with Bitcoin in 2012, his senior year at Princeton, and set up a high-powered mining rig in his dorm that generated approximately 22 Bitcoins.
- Nader's obsession with Bitcoin led him to take multiple courses on monetary theory and continue studying the topic while working full-time, finally culminating in the insights behind Basecoin.
- Nader graduated summa cum laude in Computer Science from Princeton one year early, with a certificate in Applied Math.
Lawrence Diao
- Lawrence has significant software engineering experience, having worked in Google Search and Google Ads and interned at Google Research (where he co-invented 3 patents), Sift Science, and NASA.
- Lawrence also has a background in finance as a former quant dev at Radix Trading, a Chicago-based proprietary high-frequency trading firm, and as an intern at D. E. Shaw & Co. in Institutional Asset Management.
- Lawrence graduated summa cum laude in Computer Science from Princeton with a certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning.
Josh Chen
- Josh has played key business and engineering roles at multiple startups, having served as an EIR and machine learning engineer at Merantix, a German deep learning incubator, and led a number of software engineering projects at other startups.
- Josh has a background in finance and software engineering, having worked at D. E. Shaw & Co. in options market-making.
- Josh graduated summa cum laude in Computer Science from Princeton with certificates in Applied Math and Engineering Biology.
In college, Lawrence, Josh and Nader worked on many of their classes and projects together. After college, Josh and Nader worked together at D. E. Shaw, then Lawrence and Nader worked together at Google. Throughout their time in NYC, the trio would frequently meet at Lawrence's apartment to work on problems together.