Diogo Mónica, Técnico alumnus, cofounder and president of Anchorage, is among the 100 most influential people in crypto. The técnico alumnus ranked 53rd on the Modern Consensus 100 Most Influential People in Cryto 2021 list.

This prominent position is due to Diogo Mónica’s role as the leader of Anchorage, which last January became the first OCC – approved national crypto bank in the United States. “Crypto custodian Anchorage took a huge step forward for the whole cryptocurrency industry”, as stated in the third annual Modern Consensus 100 Most Influential People in Crypto.

In addition, Anchorage raised 66 million euros (80 million dollars) in a Series C funding round. Shortly thereafter, Visa also revealed a new partnership with fintech, through a new crypto API pilot program – the “Crypto APIs” – that will allow banks to offer services with cryptocurrencies, such as storage, purchase and sale of digital products. In practice, the Anchorage banking platform will allow Visa to integrate features such as bitcoin and other digital currencies into the range of services, still in 2021.

Diogo Mónica has a degree in Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering from Técnico (Taguspark campus), and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science also from Técnico. The Técnico alumnus went to the United States to work at Square where he led the platform security team and met Nathan McCauley, who later would become his business partner at Anchorage.

Later, in 2015, Diogo Mónica started to work to Docker, where he took the same position. Also in 2015 he participated in the Web Summit, in Portugal, as a speaker. In 2017 he founded Anchorage, which is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Porto, South Dakota, New York. The fintech now secures more than 100 billion dollars in transactions annually, that is, 82.3 billion euros.

In September 2020, Diogo Mónica was among Fortune 40 Under 40 list of most influential people in the world.