Jon Matonis was Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation until December 2014 and served as a board director for the group from its 2012 inception to the time he assumed the executive director position in 2013. He is considered the foremost authority on virtual currencies, private currencies, and burgeoning e-money... Read more
Jon Matonis was Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation until December 2014 and served as a board director for the group from its 2012 inception to the time he assumed the executive director position in 2013. He is considered the foremost authority on virtual currencies, private currencies, and burgeoning e-money instruments such as Bitcoin, Gridcoin, social game credits, and stored value.
Matonis is a board advisor to start-ups in: bitcoin, cryptography, gaming, mobile and prepaid. His career has included senior influential posts at Sumitomo Bank, VISA where he was Chief Forex Trader, VeriSign, and Hushmail where he was CEO.
Matonis also provides e-money consulting services to companies on alternative currency programs, bitcoin processing, compliance, jurisdiction selection, monetisation strategies, risk management, and virtual currency platforms.
His work on digital cash has been published by Dow Jones and the London School of Economics. Matonis is also a columnist at Forbes Magazine, American Banker, and CoinDesk. He is Editor of The Monetary Future, a leading economics blog at the intersection of free banking, cryptography, and digital currency.
Jon earned his B.A. in Economics at George Washington University in 1985. He also studied Economics and Computer Software Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.
He has presented on Bitcoin and its disruptive economic implications to a wide variety of audiences, including the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank, IRS, DHS, major financial institutions, iGaming operators, hedge funds, and family offices.