I am Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, a diversified financial services company operating in the digital asset, cryptocurrency, and blockchain technology sector. I manage a research team and platform that generates unique insights on the state of public blockchain networks and digital asset policy for our clients and counterparties.
Prior to joining Galaxy, I was an investor at Avon Ventures, the bitcoin and blockchain-focused venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. Before Avon, I was Director of Blockchain Research at Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, and before that held roles managing investigations for internal, litigation, and compliance inquiries at Fidelity Investments.
I spend a lot of time researching bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, markets, and policy. I want to build and help people access tools to increase self-sovereignty, privacy, security, and liberty.
I’m a child of the internet. I launched this website – AlexThorn.com – in 1999 when I was a young teenager. My generation grew up with the earliest incarnations of the internet, and came of age as the internet did. My first computer was a Macintosh Classic, and I think I set it on fire, literally. Cell phones became widespread when we were in middle and high school, smartphones when we were in college. We were the first users of social media platforms like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Before that, platforms and technologies like AOL, AIM, ICQ, IRC, Hotline, Napster, and Bittorrent defined our early use of the web. First as a hobbyist and then as a professional investigator and researcher, I became interested encryption and network penetration tools, and discovered bitcoin.
For fun, here’s a video of Abby Johnson, Fidelity’s CEO, describing some early consulting I did for Fidelity in her 2017 keynote address at the Consensus conference.