Diogo Mónica is a Portuguese-American entrepreneur and engineer who is the co-founder of Anchorage Digital, a

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

and

digital asset A digital asset is anything that exists only in digital form and comes with a distinct usage right or distinct permission for use. Data that do not possess those rights are not considered assets. ''Digital assets'' include, but are not limited t ...

platform headquartered in the United States. Prior to founding Anchorage, he led cybersecurity at companies like

Square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

and Docker.

Early life and education

Diogo Mónica was born in the

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

state of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, but was raised primarily in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

. His father was a captain in the

Portuguese Navy The Portuguese Navy (), also known as the Portuguese War Navy (''Marinha de Guerra Portuguesa'') or as the Portuguese Armada (''Armada Portuguesa''), is the navy of the Portuguese Armed Forces. Chartered in 1317 by King Dinis of Portugal, it is ...

. Mónica attended the

Instituto Superior Técnico The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST, also known as Técnico, and stylized TÉCNICO LISBOA; English: ) is the school of engineering and technology of the University of Lisbon. It was founded as an autonomous school in 1911, and was integrated in ...

(IST) in Taguspark, earning a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

in telecommunications and informatics engineering and a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in communication networks engineering. He ultimately earned his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in computer science at IST.

Career

While still at university, Mónica presented a paper at a conference in the United States, garnering job offers from

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

and

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. He opted to take a job with the startup payment platform,

(now Block), as lead security engineer. While working at Square, Mónica identified an issue with the online reservation service,

OpenTable OpenTable is an online restaurant-reservation service company founded by Sid Gorham, Eric Moe and Chuck Templeton on July 2, 1998, and based in San Francisco, California. In 1998, operations began with a limited selection of restaurants in Sa ...

, 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, publishing the code and his findings on his eponymous blog. In 2015, Mónica left Square to become the security lead at the software company, Docker. Throughout his time at Square and Docker, he was also a member of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

, chairing the institute's Public Visibility Committee for a time. In November 2017, he co-founded digital asset platform Anchorage Digital with Nathan McCauley, whom he had met while working at Square. Mónica is the president of Anchorage, which has the first federally chartered cryptocurrency bank in the United States and received a valuation of over $3 billion in 2021.

References

External links

Official website
21st-century Portuguese businesspeople Instituto Superior Técnico alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Mónica, Diogo Year of birth missing (living people) Living people