Diogo Mónica

Diogo Mónica was born in the U.S. state of California, but was raised primarily in Portugal.^[1] His father was a captain in the Portuguese Navy.^[2] Mónica attended the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Taguspark,^[3] earning a bachelor's degree in telecommunications and informatics engineering^[4] and a master's degree in communication networks engineering.^[5] He ultimately earned his PhD in computer science at IST.^[6]

While still at university, Mónica presented a paper at a conference in the United States, garnering job offers from Google and Facebook. He opted to take a job with the startup payment platform, Square (now Block),^[3] as lead security engineer. While working at Square, Mónica identified an issue with the online reservation service, OpenTable, 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,^[7] publishing the code and his findings on his eponymous blog.^[8]

In 2015, Mónica left Square^[3] to become the security lead at the software company, Docker.^[9] Throughout his time at Square and Docker, he was also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, chairing the institute's Public Visibility Committee for a time.^[10] In November 2017, he co-founded digital asset platform Anchorage Digital with Nathan McCauley, whom he had met while working at Square.^[3] Mónica is the president of Anchorage,^[11] which has the first federally chartered cryptocurrency bank in the United States^[12] and received a valuation of over $3 billion in 2021.^[13]

• Official website