Co-founder and chief evangelist officer for Codex, Alex Gordon-Brander, spoke to Cointelegraph about his Bitcoin story, the real-world use cases for crypto, and the economic downturn during a World Economic Forum interview in Davos, Switzerland.
Standing curbside in front of Davos’ “Crypto House” at dusk, where Gordon-Brander had just finished demonstrating Codex’s capabilities during a crypto panel, the co-founder shared an upbeat outlook on crypto.
A long-serving crypto enthusiast and trad-fi veteran, Gordon-Brander told Cointelegraph he was exploring digital and energy-backed currencies prior to discovering Bitcoin (BTC). He researched a “distributed currency based on renewable energy credits and governments,” but he concedes it was “super complicated.”
Around the time, a friend shared a Bitcoin idea with Gordon-Brander, but like most people that first hear about Bitcoin — especially so early on — Gordon-Brander thought it’s “probably not going to work.”
He tried to get hold of some satoshis but his employer at the time, Bridgewater Associates– — founded by former Bitcoin basher turned Bitcoin bull, Ray Dalio — “couldn’t handle the compliance.” Fast forward to 2015, the year the Ethereum network launched, and Gordon-Brander realized the cryptocurrency space had legs.
“I’d been really intrigued by Bitcoin but the idea of a programmable currency — the idea of a world computer and an interoperable financial system, that blew me away,” he said.
From 2015 onwards, Gordon-Brander assisted the launch of a crypto exchange and participated in the initial coin offering boom before joining Codex Labs.
Related: ‘CBDCs are the natural evolution,’ says HyperLedger director Barbosa
Although interest among investors in decentralized
Read more on cointelegraph.com