There’s a specific kind of hunger that doesn’t fade when you’ve made it. The kind that isn’t fed by money, or respect, or even revenge — only by motion.
That’s the real drug. Not wealth. Not status. Velocity.
Miami, 2003-2008
I was born in Miami, FL, and lived in what at the time was called Miramar, now called Hollywood for the first little chunk of my life.
I was born on December 4, 2003, and for the first 4 years, life was OK. We weren’t wealthy by *any* means, the adjustable rate mortgage trend of the early 2000’s allowed my parents to buy a nice house, when developers were building a ton of homes in southern Florida. We had a 2000 red Pontiac Montana, and a green 2000 Honda Civic EX. No pets though, as my brother was always allergic.
Then, in Summer 2008, when I was just five years old, everything came crashing down.
Everyone in our neighborhood, Riviera Isles, and surrounding neighborhoods all foreclosed on their homes. Our home was at imminent risk of foreclosure as my parents had both lost their jobs.
To not have to foreclose on our home, we decided to rent out the entire thing, including the garage and backyard, and move into our Pontiac, sell our Civic, and we would earn enough revenue to keep our home and still stay relatively normal.
My name was still on the mailbox, but it wasn’t mine anymore. That’s how 2008 ended my childhood.
The Cigar and the $280
I lived in that 2000 Pontiac Montana for a week. That’s it.
One week was enough to burn the lesson in permanently: comfort is a privilege, and desperation is fuel if you don’t waste it.
What helped was my Aunt Debbie worked for the Miami Tourism Board, where she had a small apartment in Aventura, Florida, and often worked in Brickell. When I moved in with her briefly, I noticed that there were tons of nice cars on the street, with wealthy people all around. In the early 2000’s, the Bentley Continental was the car to have, and the first car I ever cleaned for someone was a light blue Bentley for a rather older man with a cigar.
I didn’t even ask for any money at the time, as being five I wasn’t really thinking. However, the older man gave me $280 in crumpled bills straight from his pocket. They had a tobacco smell, but I immediately realized something.
The world pays attention when you don’t stop showing up.
Immediately I started cleaning everyone else’s cars. Some would slide me a twenty, but other’s asked me to come by their house to clean their car for them on a regular basis, and I happily obliged. Extremely quickly I went from being homeless to earning two thousand a week.
However, I still felt that there was a better way. So I walked by the marina, and saw that there were a ton of OK sized boats. Less than forty-five feet I’d say.
I offered to clean them for free, just to be allowed on — and to my surprise, the owners laughed, but said yes.
Here I was, in ninety degree weather cleaning some guys boat, but as always, I was extremely retentive about perfection, but more importantly, speed.
I was able to clean the wood deck of this guys boat extremely fast, and for that he was grateful. So he recommended me to a few of his friends, and I moved on from there.
Eventually, I was the only detailer for the entire marina. I cleaned until the hulls glowed like mirrors. Interestingly, Miami has a lot of foreign money, so one of the yacht owners asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes, without asking what he was doing for money.
I came to learn he was exporting cars overseas.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it printed cash, and I was extremely good at it. I didn’t have cable, but I did have internet and a crappy black HP desktop. So instead of watching TV, doing homework for school, I was reading.
I would have never gotten here, if I had been focused on money.
Jay Leno’s Roadster
I very quickly followed Jay Leno’s Garage on YouTube, but having never seen the Tonight Show, I never actually knew he was famous. I just thought he was a really cool guy with a lot of cool cars.
In October, I noticed that Jay Leno had uploaded a video with this guy that had a weird name. Elon Musk.
In the video, he showed off this extremely cool car, a black Tesla roadster. Now, at the time in Miami, there were a decent amount of Lotus Elise models on the streets. Not a lot, but if you looked you would find one every once in awhile, but they were always cool. So I thought this roadster was the coolest thing ever, as instead of having an engine, this car was entirely battery powered.
I was hooked.
Having already loved cars detailing them in the hot Florida sun, I was even more hooked on electric vehicles, and wanted to know more about them, their history, and how they would advance to take over the world, and Jay Leno — oddly — had an affinity for all types of vehicles.
I saw the Baker Electric and realized that there were EV’s back in the early twentieth century, and that there steam, electric, and gas vehicles all competing for superiority until World War I, when gasoline took its true leap forward.
Regardless, I was fascinated that Elon was doing something extremely interesting, and found that Elon was also launching rockets as well. Now, I have never really been a “space” person, I wouldn’t say that I love the “space” part of Star Wars and Star Trek. Nor was I ever that interested in the solar system, but my only brother, Patrick, has always been interested, and we bonded a lot over his love for space and Lord of the Rings. If I was more interested in Dune and the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, he was deeply interested in Lord of the Rings, so I have a weirdly large knowledge of both genres.
Quiet Rooms and Real Power
Through having an deep affinity for cars, I loved attending car shows. From attending car shows, I realized there were “Concours d’Elegance” events, where a bunch of people would bring cool cars all to one place, from around the globe. From cleaning boats, I learned a lot about boats, and learned that there were huge boat shows.
From these events, I met a lot of people from around the globe. Those people liked me, and trusted me to do things for them.
They also taught me a lot about watches and planes, stocks, and invited me over to see horse races, Polo matches, and more.
Because of my earlier love for Tesla, I decided to buy Tesla stock early, and told other’s to do the same.
2012
A lot of my conviction around building trustless systems comes from my aunt Debbie.
She wasn't rich, just wanted to feel like she could be. She drove a bright yellow Mercedes SLK230 for the badge, not the car.
She got pulled into an insurance MLM in Miami. The usual pitch: independence, residual income, $200 commissions for recruiting. I watched her get deeper into it, not because she was greedy, but because she was desperate.
She was diabetic, too ashamed to check her blood sugar in public. Back then, no Dexcom, just finger pricks. Quietly, she started cutting back on insulin to save money.
The man who recruited her was Patrick. Older, charismatic. Always talking about freedom, leverage, building your empire. He got close to my aunt. Real close.
She invited us all to the W Hotel in Miami for her fiftieth birthday, including him. That's when I saw it clearly: Patrick wasn't a builder. He was a mirror. He told people what they wanted to hear and reflected just enough back to make them feel seen.
Two months later, she was dead.
I was eight, holding her ashes at the funeral. I asked to speak. All I could say was: "She's gone."
The wrong incentives kill good people.
She didn't die because she was poor. She died because she trusted the wrong system. Patrick never showed up to the funeral, but he's still out there, still pitching freedom to desperate people.
That's why I build what I build. Systems that don't depend on trust. Systems that work whether the Patrick in someone's life shows up or doesn't.
Because I never want anyone to have to rent their life from someone like that again.
The market opportunity is massive, but the mission is personal. We're building systems that could have saved my aunt's life.
New England, New Mission
From there on out, I couldn’t stand to be in Miami. Every corner. Every boat. Every moment I couldn’t stand to be in Miami. If I walked by a restaurant that I went to with my aunt, it immediately made me cry.
After the experience of losing my aunt, from her being perfectly live two months before to being gone without a goodbye, nothing makes me cry.
I now feel anyone I come across will be “gone” without a warning.
Only seeing places I remember in Miami can make me cry. The same goes for my mother.
So my dad got a new job, and we left everything behind to move to New England.
New schools. New culture. Long move from South Florida to New England.
Its an extremely different culture than it was in Florida, but I still kept my identity.
So through my love for cars, I found an entirely new group of people that took me in.
New business models, new focuses. Heavy focus on being on the internet, and I went all in on Bitcoin and crypto because it’s the only space where individual ownership, control, and upside aren’t just features — they’re the foundation. The sovereignty of crypto appealed to something deep inside of me.
I found a few NYC investors that wanted to get in on crypto investing and REITs, and oddly, I knew a lot about how wallets (and real estate) worked for a twelve year old. I also knew a lot about the blockchain, and how to “time” the market to maximize returns, because I watched and studied it like a hawk.
This was around the time Coinbase was being founded, and I was extremely excited about it, as for the first time buying crypto wasn’t a whack process, and I was extremely excited to see that Brian Armstrong was an upstanding person within the industry.
Not to sound like some whack-job, but I’ve always been fascinated by the future. Having read “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, and liking science fiction, I’ve always been a tech optimist, even when everyone else is a tech pessimist.
I’ve always loved Boston Dynamics. Steve Jobs ability to market products effectively, specifically his cadence and presentation ability, and his relentless pursuit of perfection in products. I bought an iPhone with my car wash money back in 2008, and was extremely excited to buy the MacBook Air because of the manila folder presentation.
The timing Steve Jobs had, and the on stage charisma, was truly mesmerizing, and I believe it’s truly a talent that I wish I had.
So I worked for many years investing in real estate and crypto with other people’s money, and providing pretty great returns, empowered by my commitment to transparency.
I believe strongly that lying, even white lies, are lies to oneself.
So I would be extremely clear to people when I’ve made a mistake. Lost money. Messed up personally.
And because of that openness to being transparent with others, even when its hard, people know that even though I may not be perfect, I’ll improve. And I always do.
Not a love story
I wasn’t ever chasing a person. I wasn’t trying to prove something to anyone.
I just wanted the kind of freedom you can feel in your bones. The kind that makes your past irrelevant.
That week in the Pontiac never leaves me.
Not because I’m afraid of going back—
But because I never want to stop moving forward.
Today
Even though I am now successful, maybe too successful for a twenty-one year old, I really haven't made a change in anything substantial. Sure, I can continue doing what I do now for the rest of my life. But where is the change for the betterment of the world?
So given my deep experience in crypto and physical assets, I have now set out to make the change for the betterment of the world.
The world has never really moved on from middlemen in the physical world. And the problem isn't sexy enough for people to have an irrational commitment to solving. While everyone obsesses over digital transformation and virtual assets, the fundamental infrastructure that governs how we own, transfer, and verify physical things remains trapped in nineteenth-century thinking. Paper deeds, intermediary institutions, trust-based verification systems that break down precisely when you need them most.
I read the book by Chris Dixon called "Read Write Own", and it felt like a mirror. Long before crypto, I learned the hard way that if you don't own where you live, what you earn, or what you create, you're just renting your life from someone else. That realization didn't come from reading about economic theory or studying market dynamics. It came from watching paper systems break families, middlemen stall survival, and ownership become a myth for most people.
That's why crypto didn't feel new to me. It felt inevitable. The same coordination problems that make digital ownership fragile make physical ownership even more precarious. The same intermediary capture that prevents people from truly controlling their online presence prevents them from truly controlling their material circumstances. The same lack of programmable trust that makes digital transactions expensive and unreliable makes physical transactions a bureaucratic nightmare that favors those with existing capital and connections.
Everything I'm building now, these trust rails for the physical world, is a direct result of what I lived through. This isn't a pivot from my previous work or a strategic repositioning based on market opportunities. It's a mission I was born into, shaped by experiences that taught me how systems of ownership actually work and who they're designed to serve.
Now I'm building the rails I wish existed when I had nothing, so no one has to rent their future from someone else again. The infrastructure that would let someone verify ownership without depending on institutions that might deny them access. The protocols that would let someone transfer assets without paying tribute to gatekeepers who add no value. The systems that would let someone build wealth without requiring permission from people who benefit from keeping wealth concentrated.
And I've knocked on the doors of venture capitalists' homes to pitch, attended a Barry's class just to meet the right investor. Not because I'm desperate for validation or because I enjoy the performance of fundraising, but because I believe strongly in what I'm building. Not for myself. For the betterment of society.
The physical world needs the same infrastructure revolution that crypto brought to digital assets. We need programmable ownership for real estate, verifiable provenance for physical goods, trustless transfer mechanisms for tangible assets. We need systems that work for people without existing social capital, without political connections, without the ability to navigate complex bureaucratic processes.
This isn't about making existing systems more efficient. It's about making them unnecessary. It's about building parallel infrastructure that works better, costs less, and serves people who have been systematically excluded from ownership opportunities.
The middlemen who control physical asset transfers aren't going to reform themselves. The institutions that gatekeep property ownership aren't going to become more accessible out of moral conviction. The bureaucratic systems that make simple transactions expensive and slow aren't going to streamline themselves.
Change has to come from outside. It has to come from people who understand both the technical possibilities and the human costs of the current system. It has to come from builders who see infrastructure problems as opportunities to expand human potential rather than extract rent from human necessity.
That's what I'm building. That's why I'm building it. Not because the market demands it, but because the world needs it. Not because it's the next logical step in my career, but because it's the work I was always meant to do.