about me past work

Who is this?


I'm a software developer. I was previously a senior software engineer and tech lead at Google, where I worked for around eight years on Maps/Earth, Gmail anti spam, signup abuse and login security. In 2014 I left Google to focus on Bitcoin development full time. After two years of doing that, I joined R3 as the lead platform engineer, where I led development of the Corda project. I am currently leading Hydraulic Software, a developer tools company.

I write a blog at blog.plan99.net, which covers a mix of programming, politics and economics.

You can email me at mike@plan99.net or contact me on the Kotlin Slack. I don't use Twitter.

Satoshi Emails

I was a Bitcoin developer for about five years, and one of the earliest Bitcoin users. I had a variety of conversations over email with Satoshi Nakamoto before he departed the project, which I have since published as documents of historical interest. Many of the discussions cover topics that were long since documented or resolved, but back in these early years very little about Bitcoin was documented or understood, so asking Satoshi directly was the only way to get clear answers. None of these email discussions contain any clue as to his identity.

Talks

I have given a variety of talks on Gmail, Bitcoin, Corda and the future in general.


A talk on why the web makes it hard to create decentralized apps.


A talk on autonomous agents

Fighting for the right to be ruled by machines, at The Conference in Malmo


General thoughts on Bitcoin and how it's doing, how it might work out



CordaCon 2018 - some thoughts on where the project is going



Future of Bitcoin and rebuilding the financial system



The state of our fight against Gmail hacking and spam/abuse circa 2012.