Peter Vessenes has deep roots in digital currency, tokenization, and blockchain technology. He founded CoinLab, the first venture-backed Bitcoin company, as well as the first company to deliver 65nm Bitcoin mining chips at scale. He also co-founded the Bitcoin Foundation, serving as its first executive director and chairman, and holds the fundamental patent for deanonymizing Bitcoin transactions.
Vessenes has provided digital currency consulting services for private and public software companies as well as security and law-related entities, including the US Treasury Department, FinCEN, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI. He serves as the chief cryptographer for the Deluge Network, a system that allows investors to directly participate in Ethereum-based initial coin offerings (ICOs) using Bitcoin, and Metronome, a project which aims to create a “politics-free digital currency” to exist across multiple blockchains.
An expert in smart contracts functionality, he was the first to publicly identify and publish a paper on specific security vulnerabilities in the Ethereum Network’s DAO, a community-funded, decentralized organization that ultimately lost its value in 2016 as a result of a “re-entrance attack” that Vessenes originally pointed out.
His newest enterprise, New Alchemy, works with some of the world’s most innovative companies to provide blockchain technology, strategy, and capital solutions for the tokenized future. Since its launch in 2016, New Alchemy has been involved in more than $2 billion of tokenization value.
