Early Life, Education & First Steps

I was born in the former USSR and spent my early childhood in a small village not far from what is now the border between Ukraine and Russia. In the 1980s, while my parents were studying engineering in Lugansk, my twin brother and I lived with our grandparents. Those years left me with a lasting fascination for the spiritual side of life - old wisdom traditions, the mysterious, and the things we can’t easily explain.

My family was very technical, so I was introduced to computers and computer architecture early on and picked up solid math skills well before I started school. After the collapse of the USSR, my parents moved to Spain, where I attended a German school. Later I studied finance in Madrid and joined Deutsche Bank S.A.E., working across trade finance, trading, and B2B/B2C account management. In 2008, just as the financial crisis was unfolding, I turned down an offer to become a branch manager and decided to move into technology instead.

Pivot to Technology

Alongside my work in finance, I gradually returned to what had always interested me most: software. I built trading bots and signal systems - a few of them did well for a while - and then started exploring other areas. An online‑gaming bot sold in decent volume, and an Android music search/scraping app briefly reached the top three in the charts with more than three million users. The income from that project gave me the freedom to switch fully into IT consulting.

Computer Science

I earned my first Computer Science degree while I was still in college (before university). Later, while living in Mainz, I completed a second Computer Science degree at TU Darmstadt. Around that time I delivered full‑time projects for several well‑known companies - first on Android and then on Samsung's Bada devices. Together with my brother, we built the largest independent Bada developer community, won Samsung's Developer Challenge, and attracted more work on top of that.

After Darmstadt, I stepped away from formal education. I became skeptical of collecting credentials for their own sake and chose to keep learning by building the things I needed, without worrying about having official papers to back them up. I preferred to let my work speak for itself. Over time I became more of a generalist and dived into a broad range of technologies - from mobile and full‑stack cloud work to distributed systems.

Consulting & Leadership

Over the following 15+ years I worked across startups and larger companies, gradually moving from hands‑on developer roles into leadership positions such as Lead Developer, Head of Engineering, and CTO, while also continuing to launch my own ventures along the way.

DLT Leadership

I entered the DLT space around 2016-2017 and became deeply involved with IOTA, where I built a reputation as an independent developer. My work on a Go (Golang) node - at one point supporting around 80% of the IOTA network - later served as inspiration for the official node implementation. As the wider DLT ecosystem became increasingly chaotic, I welcomed the introduction of the EU's MiCA framework and contributed as an independent industry‑side consultant. After that, I served as CTO on two projects I'm particularly proud of:

1. Clinq.Gold

For Clinq.Gold, I designed a multi‑issuer, gold‑backed digital currency for African markets. It was built to be interoperable from the start, with strong checks and balances, and designed to work as the basis for a currency union without a central bank. During this period, the team behind “Unit” - presented publicly as a potential backbone for a future BRICS digital currency - approached us about acquiring our technology. We also held ministerial‑level talks with several African governments. There was real momentum, but the combination of governance complexity and limited funding made progress difficult. The technology and experience from that work later helped Clinq secure a Bolivian government contract to design a gold‑backed currency to sit alongside their planned CBDC.

2. Schuman Financial

In 2024 I joined Schuman Financial as CTO and CISO to help launch what aimed to be the first MiCA‑compliant euro stablecoin. The team was excellent. As we moved forward, it became clear from the market signals - strong competition and limited overall demand for euro stablecoins - that the product needed a much sharper focus. I eventually moved on, but the experience gave me a deeper understanding of system‑level digital finance, banking‑rail integrations, and cross‑border payment flows.

AI Research

My early trading and gaming bots were small first steps into applied AI, long before frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow were available. In the 2010s I built AI‑driven market‑research tools and book‑recommendation engines for several companies. More recently, I've designed arbitrage bots for v2 and v3 DEX pools.

These days I'm shifting more of my focus back to AI, especially Transformers (the technology behind large language models), RAG systems, and autonomous or assisted agents. I'm also working on DLT security topics, particularly governance architecture, and on Requirements Engineering - translating business objectives into concrete technical roadmaps.

My Startups

Over the years I've launched a number of startups. Most of them failed in one way or another, and I learned something important from each one. One social‑network project ended in a small but successful exit. Another, a DLT/GameFi startup funded by Binance Labs (investment plus program), ultimately didn't survive the shock around FTX - we simply hadn't planned enough runway for that level of market stress.

The venture I'm most proud of is still the IT consultancy I co‑founded with my twin brother. Over more than a decade we worked with loyal clients across Web2 and Web3, in a wide range of sectors.

Mind and Motion

I've been practicing yoga for more than 15 years. At first it was simply a way to balance my running (I'm currently ranked in roughly the top 3% of my age group), but over time it grew into a broader personal practice.

I later complemented yoga with breathwork and cold‑exposure training. As a certified Wim Hof instructor, I took part in several expeditions, including climbing mountains in just shorts in around −25°C wind chill. These experiences showed me very directly how much the mind and body are capable of when they are trained and supported properly.

Quite early on, I realized how important it is to look after your “inner garden.” Keeping an inner balance - the sense of “wa” - and being careful about what you allow in and out became central for me. Meditation and journaling helped a lot, as did studying philosophy, symbolism, and Jungian psychology. Over time I stepped away from the constant stream of news, social media, and most modern entertainment, and focused instead on timeless classics and information that felt aligned with my values.

The Creative Process

I see most genuinely new ideas, deeper insights, and real art as coming from the unconscious. My job is mainly to stay open and pay attention, trusting that ideas will appear when the conditions are right. In that sense, creativity - whether in art or in technology - is about learning to “tune in” and listen.

That requires a certain emptiness and receptiveness in the mind, and a strong connection to the unconscious. I think this is one of the things that still makes humans distinct and not easily replaced by AI.

For me, that creative connection shows up in different forms: small coding experiments, drawing, photography, gardening, and making music. All of these are ways of staying in touch with that inner source and keeping the creative energy moving.