Justin Drake

“Time has 3 components. Past, present and future. The key property of the past is that it's immutable, it's fixed, you can't change it. The key property of the present is that it's open to all, it's a shared experience, it's ubiquitous. The key property of the future is that it's bound to happen, you can't stop it. It’s exactly the same with Bitcoin.”

After completing a Mathematics degree at Cambridge University, Justin went on to utilise his talent by becoming a software engineer. In 2013, whilst working on a project in the financial sector, he came across Bitcoin, and it quickly took over his life.

He saw Bitcoin as a breakthrough in computer science and could see the potential it had to rebuild 3 major pillars of the internet: Trust, Money and Law.

He became obsessed and founded the Cambridge Bitcoin Meetup group, left his job to study the crypto space, spoke at conferences, operated a Bitcoin ATM, and then founded a Bitcoin startup to try and make Openbazaar, a marketplace built on Bitcoin, easier to use.

Then in 2015, Ethereum was launched, and Justin's life began to alter course.

Openbazzar wasn’t doing so well, so in 2017 he left his startup and focused his energy on looking for problems in the crypto space. This led him to a presentation by Vitalik Buterin (the founder of Ethereum), about something called the ‘Data Availability Problem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJT_fR7wexw)’. He gave it some thought and finally emailed Vitalik with some proposed solutions.

Vitalik was so impressed by Justin, that he offered him a job at the Ethereum Foundation, to join a small handful of people working on Eth 2.0.

Justin went on to solve problems too complex for most to even grasp and played a key role in the execution of the famous ETH Merge that occurred last month. There are few who understand Ethereum as deeply, and alongside his work, he’s been educating thousands via podcasts and interviews, and amassed a large following on Twitter.

It is with this backdrop, that we are honoured to announce that Justin will be speaking at CowShed, sharing his insights with you.