Launching Paradigma

Originally published on 24 August 2019.

Today, I'm very excited to share that I am launching Paradigma, a new company that provides educational and advisory services focused on digital assets and distributed consensus systems.

This also (sadly!) means that I am leaving my full-time position in academia at the University of Cambridge. I have spent nearly three wonderful years at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, where I had the good fortune of contributing to unique cryptocurrency and blockchain research. I am very grateful to the Centre -- and Bryan Zhang in particular -- for giving me the opportunity to join this newly established research programme just after graduating from college in 2016, and subsequently placing trust in me to run the team as programme lead for much of the last 2 years.

During this time, we produced half a dozen research studies that have been very positively received by other researchers, the industry, the media, as well as policymakers and regulators. We also participated in numerous regulatory roundtables, presented our research findings at conferences and events all over the globe, and spent significant efforts and time educating a wide range of stakeholders with regards to the opportunities, but also challenges and risks of these new types of systems. Oh, and not to forget the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), a real-time tool for estimating Bitcoin's electricity consumption that we just recently launched!

I now feel that it's time for me to start a new chapter and take a more active role in the ecosystem that I've been following and studying for more than five years, since I first fell down the proverbial rabbit hole in early 2014. Today, the space is still largely riddled with questionable offerings, general confusion over key concepts, and deceitful marketing, which often result in misguided efforts wasting time, money, and resources -- and even worse, potentially lead to growing frustration and resignation. Paradigma has been founded to help individuals and organisations navigate this changing landscape, free from hype and hyperbole.

I am very much looking forward to embarking on this new adventure in the coming months. Please feel free to drop me a message at michel@paradigma.lu or contact me on Twitter if you would like to have a chat.

All the best,
Michel