Dan Held is a Texan who doesn’t drive a truck, drink beer, love Trump, or watch sports activities. He’s a tech fanatic who isn’t into coding. He se
Dan Held is a Texan who doesn’t drive a truck, drink beer, love Trump, or watch sports activities. He’s a tech fanatic who isn’t into coding. He seems like a typical preppy dude, carrying a white-button-up shirt and carrying a swoop haircut, however he flies drones, tinkers on full nodes, and writes about libertarian ideas.
He doesn’t match the standard stereotypes. “It’s been exhausting to reconcile that by way of the place I slot in.”
Soccer, Held says, is a giant deal in Texas. Years in the past, the expansion lead at cryptocurrency change Kraken loved success as a soccer participant there, going 16-Zero and successful state in his senior 12 months of highschool. He performed tight finish, a place that requires a excessive diploma of versatility as a mix of offensive lineman and receiver. He modestly suggests he wasn’t notably good at anyone ability on the soccer area and has continued in the same vein in a jack-of-all-trades place at Kraken.
Even whereas going undefeated in highschool soccer, the self-described “jock-nerd” was additionally crushing superior placement exams.
However Held has grown accustomed to the continued dichotomies which have constructed his character — and, finally, his profession. He grew up all around the political and societal map in an uncommon melange of experiences, spending time in Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas, ultimately touchdown in San Francisco.
He was one of many few individuals in his circles who was actually into Bitcoin in its early days, but was decidedly non-techie. What actually grabbed him was Bitcoin’s worth proposition as an answer to the failures of recent financial coverage. Throughout his school days, the 2008 monetary disaster induced him to query the system. He quickly was captivated by Bitcoin’s financial coverage and the way effectively it match with the libertarian ideology of free markets.
Finding out finance as an undergrad in 2008, Held recalled a breakdown in his religion within the monetary system and within the specialists that have been supposed to clarify and defend it. “My professors didn’t know what they have been speaking about, everybody on TV didn’t know what they have been speaking about, all of the establishments that we had formally trusted, we couldn’t belief anymore.” It shook his foundational belief within the monetary system that almost all of us take with no consideration.
Surrounded by the textbooks of his economics courses, he was hit with a revelation: “Wait. So, all these books are bullshit?”
If you happen to fall, it’s solely a 1,000 foot fall
Years of being yelled at by demanding soccer coaches have immunized Held from caving below strain.
It in all probability additionally helped that his father was an excessive sports activities fanatic who bicycled throughout America at 60 years previous. He would take the teenaged Held boys out on “14er” hikes, climbing 14,000 foot mountain peaks in Colorado. “One slip, and it’s a thousand toes till you hit one thing. That’s what I grew up with.”
To say it instilled a way of ruggedness and perseverance could be an understatement.
The teachings have caught with Held all through his profession, serving him effectively when he wanted to make fast selections below strain. It’s additionally hardened his resolve in relation to squaring up in opposition to opponents.
“There’s nothing extra necessary than cash,” Held insists. “It’s the underpinning of all worth in society.”
“It’s type of humorous within the crypto area the place individuals whine about competitors they usually whine about fierceness and I’m like ‘Effectively, welcome to how the world works.’ There are winners and losers. Not everybody wins.”
In Held’s view, the winner in enterprise is the corporate that builds a product that serves humankind in a greater manner.
All of it traces again to Texas
Texans, Held says, are a novel kind of individuals. It’s one in every of a handful of states that was an impartial republic earlier than voluntarily selecting to hitch america. “So, in colleges in Texas, in elementary college, center college, highschool, you pledge allegiance to the American flag and the Texas flag.”
Texan tradition is fiercely impartial, Held elaborates. The College of Texas took bodily supply of their gold from the Federal Reserve as a result of they didn’t belief them with their gold. “That’s the extent of being a Texan.”
This core underpinning made the idea of Bitcoin instantly palatable when he first heard about it. On the time, ZeroHedge was breaking information of corruption on Wall Avenue, from high-frequency buying and selling cheats to metals manipulation, all earlier than mainstream media was keen to the touch the tales. In opposition to this backdrop, Bitcoin’s financial coverage stood out as a sublime answer. “I’m a libertarian Austrian economics kind of man, so I heard about Bitcoin and was like, ‘Oh that is good. 21 million exhausting cap? Genius.’ The disinflationary financial coverage is the breakthrough.”
It was a stroke of luck that landed Held in San Francisco at simply the proper time. Working for a small funding agency out of Dallas, Held was relocated to San Francisco in January, 2013. There…