Diogo Mónica

Diogo Mónica was born in the U.S. state of California, but was raised primarily in Portugal.[1] His father was a captain in the Portuguese Navy.[2] Mónica attended the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Taguspark,[3] earning a bachelor's degree in telecommunications and informatics engineering[4] and a master's degree in communication networks engineering.[5] He ultimately earned his PhD in computer science at IST.[6]

While still at university, Mónica presented a paper at a conference in the United States, garnering job offers from Google and Facebook. He opted to take a job with the startup payment platform, Square (now Block),[3] as lead security engineer. While working at Square, Mónica identified an issue with the online reservation service, OpenTable, that let users create bots to reserve tables as soon as a reservation became available. He also wrote code that would allow other users to do the same,[7] publishing the code and his findings on his eponymous blog.[8]

In 2015, Mónica left Square[3] to become the security lead at the software company, Docker.[9] Throughout his time at Square and Docker, he was also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, chairing the institute's Public Visibility Committee for a time.[10] In November 2017, he co-founded digital asset platform Anchorage Digital with Nathan McCauley, whom he had met while working at Square.[3] Mónica is the president of Anchorage,[11] which has the first federally chartered cryptocurrency bank in the United States[12] and received a valuation of over $3 billion in 2021.[13]

• Official website