Building a community of future blockchain leaders at the University of Minnesota (@UMNews) Inquiries: [email protected]
Minneapolis, MN
Joined December 2021
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UMN Blockchain is an innovative club at the University of Minnesota invested in the future of Web3.
Our club boasts an online community of 500+ members ranging from Discord to Instagram!
Learn more about us @umnblockchain !
UMN Blockchain retweeted
Time and time again I am impressed by the people in this community and the things they pull off.
My friend Ben Iles spoke at @umnblockchain some time ago, and a few weeks later he is hosting the @BNBCHAIN side event at the Perez Art Museum Miami during @consensus2026 week. I was extremely impressed by the setup and execution.
That is the part of this industry that keeps surprising me. You meet someone once in one city, and a few weeks later you are at the event they put together somewhere else entirely.
The event itself was beautiful. The venue, the food, and the room full of crypto people. The panel on on-chain finance infrastructure was the highlight for me. I got to listen to:
Chris at @BNBCHAIN
Nile Natsheh at @awscloud
Samuel Videau at Genius Trading
Ahmed Zifzaf at @Worldpay_Global
It was also great going with my friends Zhen Zhuang and @Jeronimoxyz.
Thank you for the invite. See you next time!
#BNBChain #Crypto #Web3 #UMNBC
UMN Blockchain retweeted
We must ensure that politicians pass crypto policies that properly democratize finance and increase individual freedom!
Last week, we discussed issues with the Clarity Act and how banking lobbyists are proposing to eliminate rewards on stablecoins.
The policy entails stripping away yield rewards that individuals would earn by holding cash in stablecoins rather than in banks.
While banks attempted to eliminate their competition, @coinbase CEO @brian_armstrong withdrew support for the bill, which forced it to be redrafted.
@umnblockchain thanks @standwithcrypto for being our partner and ensuring that bipartisan policy gets passed at the federal level.
The information presented is not representative of the views of our partners and is solely my own.
You can visit their website at: lnkd.in/gCpm_8UH
Proud to support this year's official @EthereumDenver 2026 Student Mixer!
📅 Friday, Feb 20th | 5:00-8:00pm
📍 BUIDLHUB Judging Area
Not a student? Come anyway!
@BoilerChain @cublockchain_ @collegedao_hub @college_xyz @Gemini @standwithcrypto
UMN Blockchain retweeted
NEW PROGRAM: If you're a student or recent grad, apply to the a16z speedrun Alpha Fellowship for
> A $20k grant (equity-free)
> Eligibility for up to $250K investment
> OR placement at one of our portcos
This is THE program for pre-idea, pre-team founders and technical talent.
a16z Speedrun Alpha, for pre-idea/pre-team/pre-everything founders
it's time to bet on yourself, and figure out your startup idea. 2026 is well underway, crazy stuff happening in AI, and you're building agents/apps/whatever every night+weekend. You want to start a startup but you're working or still going to school.
what if you're pre-idea, pre-product, pre-launch, and even a solo founder? You need time to cook
The Alpha Fellowship is for you.
alpha.a16zspeedrun.com/
details:
- $20K equity-free upfront to start building
- up to $250K investment when you finalize
- automatic final interview for a16z speedrun, with up to $1M investment
- 8-week, in-person experience with a kickoff retreat, founder AMAs, and small-group dinners alongside the a16z speedrun community
- targeted to early-career highly technical founders
- deadline to apply is March 6
We ALSO have a "startup track" for the Alpha Fellowship where you can get more founder experience by working for a portfolio company if you're not quite ready to found something.
The Alpha Fellowship places top early-career engineers into full-time roles at fast-growing a16z speedrun and Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies. For future founders, we provide capital before a team or idea even exists.
We're looking for highly technical students and recent grads who don't want to wait to start building. Fellows take full-time roles at fast-growing portfolio companies - or, if you're ready to build now, receive capital to start your own company - kicking off with a two-month in-person fellowship. Fellows also have access to the a16z speedrun and EO Ventures communities and events.
...
If this is you, want to meet you. If you have people to introduce us to, that would be amazing too.
will have more to say, and lots of ideas coming up here. But excited to get this out! Excited to host y'all soon.
LFG @ghostofharvard
We’ve spent the last 1.5 years building inside the Solana ecosystem — quietly.
Today, that work becomes $SHARK.
Thread 🧵👇
excited 👀
Season 2 of the SharkPool Student Dashboard is coming 🦈
• 100 SOL in prizes
• $SHARK rewards for students
New season starts Feb 10.
Thread 👇
UMN Blockchain retweeted
Last Thursday, we tabled at the Spring Tech Kickoff for UMN!
Omar Siala, Joshua Colcord, Levon Stanfield, and I focused on showing other students how horizontal technologies like blockchain and smart contracts can be deployed across all major industries.
Levon Stanfield got some great clips from the event and made a great edit that we will post soon.
Omar Siala demoed how powerful prediction markets such as Polymarket can be.
Joshua Colcord explained how blockchain technology can be used for high-frequency quantitative trading through arbitrage.
Big things are coming for @umnblockchain!
UMN Blockchain retweeted
I walked away from a $240k job offer after shutting down my startup and took a trip to Japan to reset.
On the flight back I wrote down everything that built me.
So from Minecraft Factions to Prediction Markets here's my lore 👇
Some niche experiences/things that altered my brain chemistry
Magic Internet Money (Fullsent Crypto)
> flash loans, yield farming & sandwich MEV arc
> trading bot for @PancakeSwap predictions w @t1c_dev
> made dumb money on NFTs; thought I'd retire in a few months
> first @EthereumDenver (this is when I knew I had to be in this space)
> lost dumb money on NFTs
> restarted @UCIBlockchain with @ToastInspector
> DG cabal was born (ifykyk)
> @ensdomains airdrop brought life into me & @ToastInspector
> first contract with a leading protocol for @UCIBlockchain
> built a physical server + ran a node with @UCIBlockchain
> listened to @LudovicoEinaud (watching him live is a need)
> lost 50% NW during Terra Luna + Celsius + FTX
> twitter space w/ @WCTNoah/@WhaleCoinTalk about Blockchain orgs (they were insanely early)
> sold @pepe too early at 18M :(
> started and failed a blockchain startup
> started a semi-successful crypto signals discord server
> @EthereumDenver with 16 college kids in one big airbnb
> @MiladyMaker333 rave in ETHDenver
> 6 figs through contracts in 1 year @UCIBlockchain
> the day I learned to play poker
> prediction market arbitrage
> prediction market trading with @marc_villaf (minds were blown)
> starting a prop trading fund with @marc_villaf and running it up
> accepted into @avax Codebase by @mmartinxyz
> intro week in Lisbon for Codebase
> submitting the withdrawal form for @UCIrvine
> building @inertia_social
> first order successfully matching in our own in house unified order book
> first organic market created by a random
> 3 months in a big Buenos Aires house with insanely ambitious founders
Hacking, Cults & Finance (High School)
> school scapegoated me for finding a misconfig on a shared network drive
> hacked games with Cheat Engine
> jailbroken iphone (shoutout @Cydia gng)
> USB stick with tons of RATs (Orcus, njRat, DarkComet etc)
> convinced frens to crowdfund 100 custom iPhone cases to sell
> bait-and-switched by Alibaba supplier; 91 cases still in my garage
> called @PayPal at 14 asking them to unban me (they did not)
> cue 5 fig dropshipping arc
> paid someone to do my HW so I could dropship
> persuaded a classmate to "invest" in my dropshipping "company"
> built the 3rd largest student org on campus
> camp Wolfeboro as a boy scout
> pirate (ifykyk)
> cracked premiere pro
> first linux install (shoutout @ubuntu)
> traded options in class
> phone confiscated for trading options in class
> started a mini "OGB (orange golf ball) cult"
> social engineered my way into @RSAconference without a badge (sorry, game is game)
> snuck into @RSAconference afterparties
> moderated stock callout @discord server
> first time I touched a snowboard
> started an esports org
> went through @ja_usa (the most valuable youth biz program ever)
> semi-pro in @Fortnite (I will beat you in realistics)
> built an esports startup with @TranquilVarun
> attempted to convince my relatives abroad to use their ID so I could get IPO access through launchpads
> traded on binancedotcom pre US ban
> sold said esports startup with @TranquilVarun
> bought broken GPUs & fixed them
> mined @Ravencoin & @ethereum
Wee Lil Kid (Middle School)
> undercut my middle schools student leadership snack prices until school shut me down
> scavenged for PC parts during e waste pickups, built new PCs, sold them
> 100k+ followers @iFunny page
> consistently a top 5 faction in @Minecraft
> first redstone TNT cannon working on its own
> installing my first Minecraft mod (Lucky Blocks)
> many many "parent-teacher" conferences
> PC building business
> zombies on Black Ops 2
> rooted @Android
If you made it down here and resonate with this list, we probably should be friends :)
As always, I'm looking for the next rabbit hole to go down
DMs are open🤝
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