Andreas Antonopoulos is an author, podcaster, and public speaker who has made a career as an educator and longtime advocate for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Personal history
Andreas Antonopoulos was born in London in 1972 and spent his childhood in Greece before returning to the UK to study at University College London. From 1991 until 1996, he studied computer science, data communications, networks, and distributed systems, becoming a research fellow in computer science.
From 2001 until 2011, he worked in cybersecurity in the US. His most significant role during this time was Founding Partner and Senior Vice President at Nemertes Research, an advisory and consulting firm focused on emerging technologies.
Role in the crypto community
Like many leading figures in crypto, Andreas Antonopoulos was an early adopter of Bitcoin, having first become interested in it in 2012. He quit his job as a freelance security consultant to pursue his new passion and undertook unpaid work as a speaker and educator for the first few years until he could begin to monetize his efforts.
In 2014, Antonopoulos had a brief tenure at blockchain.info (later blockchain.com) as Chief Security Officer, a role he left within a year.
From 2014, Antonopoulos hosted a podcast initially called Let’s Talk Bitcoin, which he later renamed to Speaking of Bitcoin. It ended in 2022 after nearly 500 episodes.
Antonopoulos is a teaching fellow at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, which runs higher education courses in blockchain and digital currencies. In the past, he’s also appeared as an expert witness on digital currencies in regulatory hearings, including for the Canadian Senate Commerce, Banking and Finance Committee.
Despite being highly active in the Bitcoin world for over a decade, Antonopoulos has been less prominent over the last couple years, with fewer public appearances and social posts.
Books
As part of his ongoing effort to educate people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, Andreas Antonopoulos has written several books on the subject, which are widely lauded among the crypto community.
Mastering Bitcoin (2014) and Mastering Ethereum (2018) are both aimed at programmers, providing technical details of the underlying blockchain architecture of each network, its security, and transaction protocols.
The Internet of Money series (comprising three volumes published in 2016, 2017, and 2019) is effectively a written compendium of talks given by Antonopoulos over the years he has been advocating for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Notable media incidents
In 2014, Antonopoulos became embroiled in the media storm surrounding an “unmasking” of Satoshi Nakamoto by the US publication Newsweek, which had mistakenly identified Japanese-American physicist Dorian Nakamoto as Satoshi. Antonopoulos started a campaign on Reddit soliciting donations for Dorian Nakamoto to compensate him for the media attention resulting from the error.
In 2017, Antonopoulos became the inadvertent subject of a crowdfunding campaign himself after an exchange of comments with another longtime Bitcoin supporter, Roger Ver. Following a post by Antonopoulos in which he had refuted that he was a millionaire from his Bitcoin investments, Ver called him out for not having invested early in BTC when he was already involved with promoting the cryptocurrency.
Antonopoulos replied that his time working unpaid as a Bitcoin advocate forced him to sell his BTC to support himself, which resulted in a flurry of donations amounting to over 100 BTC. At the time, the value of BTC put the donations above $1.5 million.
Views
Through his prolific career as a public speaker, Antonopoulos is known for his views on issues, including the importance of Bitcoin’s neutrality, which allows it to transcend national borders and is preserved by principles such as transparency and decentralization.
In 2021, he publicly departed the Bitcoin Foundation – which had become mired in scandals surrounding other members – citing a lack of transparency. Although the move attracted ire from some who remained a part of the Foundation, Antonopoulos also received support from other members of the Bitcoin community.
Andreas Antonopoulos is widely credited as the first to use the phrase “not your keys, not your coins” – a mantra frequently used in the crypto sector to warn of the dangers of relying on centralized custody providers. This idea also formed the basis of many of his public speeches. In the past, Antonopoulos has spoken out against Bitcoin ETFs, calling them a “multi-billion dollar not-your-key-not-your-crypto vehicle.”
Andreas Antonopoulos essentials
- Andreas Antonopoulos first came to prominence around 2012-2013 as a speaker and educator on the topics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
- He’s known for coining the security mantra “not your keys, not your crypto” and for his beliefs that Bitcoin should remain open, transparent, and decentralized.
- Antonopoulos has also leveraged his background in computer science, security, and distributed computing to write popular technical guides to Bitcoin and Ethereum.