Diogo Mónica is a Portuguese-American entrepreneur and engineer. He is the co-founder of Anchorage Digital which is a cryptocurrency and digital asset platform whose headquarters is in the United States. Before this, he was leading cybersecurity at companies such as Square and Docker.
Early Life And Education
Mónica was born in the United States of California but brought up primarily in Portugal. His father was a captain in the Portuguese Navy. Mónica pursued a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications and informatics engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Taguspark. In the same institute, he pursued a master’s degree in communication networks engineering and a PhD in computer science.
Career
While pursuing the degree, he presented a paper at a conference in the United States for which he received job offers from Google and Facebook. But he refused to take the job from there and chose a startup payment platform, Square for the job position security engineer. There he discovered an issue with the online reservation service, OpenTable. This allows users to create bots to reserve tables as soon as reservations become available. He came up with a code that allow other users to perform the same.
And in 2015, he left Square to take the position of security lead at the Docker, a software company. While he was working at Square and Docker, he was also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which chairs the institute’s Public Visibility Committee for a time. Later he founded the digital asset platform Anchorage Digital with Nathan McCauley in November 2017. McCauley is his colleague in Square. Mónica is the president of Anchorge. Anchorage was the first federally chartered cryptocurrency bank in the United States and received a valuation of more than $3 billion in 2021.
NEAR Foundation Council
In October 2023, Mónica was appointed a person for the NEAR Foundation Council (NFC). NFC is a governing body of the NEAR Foundation (NF) which is similar to a board of directors. NFC is responsible for the ultimate control and administration of NF and for making significant decisions for the organization.
The above-mentioned NFC is separate from the NF’s executive team, and it is empowered by the NFC to oversee the NF’s day-to-day operations and report back to the NFC.
Personal Investments
Diogo Mónica has made 22 investments. The list of some of the investments is given below:
| Announced date | Organization Name | Symbian |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 16, 2024 | Tako | Seed Roynd – Tako |
| Apr 11, 2024 | Simbian | Seed Round – Simbian |
| Mar 1, 2024 | Bridge | Series A – Bridge |
| Sep 21, 2023 | Proof of Play | Seed Round – Proof of Play |
| Mar 15, 2023 | Pre-Seed Round – SPICYEST | Seed Round – Capsule Wallets |
| Feb 28, 2023 | Portal | Seed Round – Portal |
| Sep 20, 2022 | Integral Treasury | Venture Round – Integral Treasury |
| Jun 8, 2022 | Fruitful | Series A – Fruitful |
| Feb 20, 2022 | SPICYEST | Pre-Seed Round – SPICYEST |
| Feb 1, 2022 | Luca | Pre Seed Round – Luca |
Also Read: History Of Charlie Lee: An In-depth Dive Into The Life Of Litecoin’s Father
Final Verdict
Diogo Mónica is a well-known entrepreneur and engineer. He was leading the security team at Docker after leaving Square. Mónica is the co-founder of Anchorage Digital which is a cryptocurrency and digital asset platform. He has pursued a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD from Instituto Superior Técnico.
