Karthik has spent his entire life contributing to the decentralization and P2P Economy, he set up the first linux user group in his city back in 1997 and since then went onto work for all the leading open source companies in the world such as Red Hat, SuSE (Novell, Sun Microsystems (Solaris) and TerraSoft Solutions (Yellow Dog Linux), perhaps the only human to have worked for all the large open source companies in the world. He started with decentralization of software and went onto decentralizing all forms of production and consumption, due to his outstanding work in decentralization he was invited to become the ambassador for the P2P-Foundation, the world’s largest think tank on decentralized technologies such as Blockchain (The only place where Satoshi Nakamoto has his webpage and the place where he published the first bitcoin client and whitepaper) . Due to his P2P-Foundation link Karthik has been part of the Crypto History and has been researching Blockchain and crypto currencies as early as 2009 and actively writing and tweeting since 2011.
Karthik introduced decentralization and the Peer2Peer phenomena to Northern Europe as early as 2010 at FSCons 2010, Scandinavia’s largest tech conference. With hands on experience in tech and scaling startups, he has mentored and seeded dozens of early stage startups over the past decade. He has helped startups grow and scale from a few members to hundreds of employees globally through his venture growth builder BlockchainVelocity. He was recently interviewed by the largest Blockchain site in the world Coinmarketcap on his 10 year journey in Blockchain where he discussed the evolution of Blockchain and where the industry is going in the next decade.
Karthik was recently featured among the Top 25 Thought Leaders of the Blockchain industry in Asia. He is the Founder of Asia's first end-to-end Blockchain and Digital Assets Research firm BlockchainMonk. Karthik has been an advisor to various governments around the world on Blockchain Technology and Policy, he was recently commended for his outstanding work to support the Government of Bhutan towards building its Blockchain policy. He was nominated by Asiaone Magazine for the prestigious 40 Under 40 Youth leaders for 2021-2022 in Asia for his work to seed and nurture Blockchain ecosystems in Asia and the middle east. Iyer has delivered dozens of keynotes and over 50 panel discussions and fire side chats over the last 2 decades.
Karthik is known for his abilities to extrapolate into the medium and near future on the impact of technologies, systems and structures. His predictions on technologies and world events have come true with high levels of accuracy over the past decade. Karthik is also recognized for his ability to understand very complex topics and technologies. He is well read and well travelled and considered a polymath who is able to connect various fields and make sense of events. For these reasons he is sought after by leaders of both governments and large enterprises
Having built and scaled disruptive startups, Karthik is both handson and pragmatic on what works and what doesnt. He has developed a plethora of skills in technology, business, networking, marketing, branding, finance, accounting, strategy and sales which he has used to nurture various startups
With over a decade of involvement with the P2P-Foundation, Karthik has been sharing his expertise with various research projects around the world in areas such as sharing economy, decentralization, Peer 2 Peer systems and Blockchain.
He was the only non-European to be part of the largest EU research project on peer 2 peer value. He assisted the EU in understanding the disruptive potential of Peer 2 Peer value systems such as blockchain. He advised the heads of the largest banks and insurance firms in Europe on the potential of decentralized finance and blockchain technologies and shared his findings at LIMRA way back in 2014!
He was commended by various funds and institutions for calling the largest crypto crash in human history months before it happened.
Karthik shares his research often at leading conferences. He was tasked to research the implications of Blockchain in a post covid world, He spoke on Decentralization Technologies in a Post Covid world at the Radical Exchange conference alongside other eminent speakers such as Vitalik Buterin, leading professors from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, LSE and ministers from various countries. He was tasked with a research project on the role of Fed in regulating Blockchain, the findings of which he shared when he spoke alongside chairman of India’s FED on Crypto and Fintech innovation in 2021. Karthik has diverse experience and has keynoted, advised and contributed to almost all aspects of the Blockchain / Crypto Ecosystem.
He has expertise in over a dozen blockchain domains and has conducted and published high end research on topics such as
Central Bank Digital Currencies | Facebook’s Diem | Decentralized Finance (DeFI) | Security Token Offerings |
Digital Asset Management | Bitcoin core | Ethereum | Token Economics | Blockchain led Decentralization |
Non Fungiable Tokens (NFT’s) | Blockchain in e-Gov | Blockchain in ESG
and successfully executed dozens of Blockchain projects around the world over the past decade.
He is considered a leading expert on NFT’s and Metaverses and predicted their rise way back in 2019 at NFT.NYC (the largest NFT event in the planet where he has spoken 4 years in a row).
Karthik’s firm BlockchainMonk has been working with various leading brands to unlock the potential of NFTs and Metaverses. Karthik's and his team have worked on applying NFT's to solve real world problems such as land records, tokenizing carbon, creating digital twins using Phygital technologies to name a few.
He has shared his research findings on the Spatial Web and Metaverse by keynoting at over a dozen metaverse events such as the Metaweek, infinitverse, Wow Summit among others.
Considered a thought leader in the crypto Economics space his Master class on Tokenomics was attended by hundreds and was livestreamed to thousands around the world. It is considered to be the gold standard in the industry. He is often invited to advise on econometrics of various web3 projects and has helped push the envelope in econometrics and game theory research applied to web3 tokens.
Having been a part of the first Security token offering in Singapore he was invited to speak alongside leading tokenization platforms such as Polymath and Securitize on the STO landscape at the Chainplus summit in Singapore where he shared his expertise on tokenizing real world assets through STO’s.
He Spoke on the Emerging Landscape of Security Token Offerings at the CryptoBlockCon in Las Vegas. He shared his insights on upcoming STO regulations at the Hatch Crypto Summit. He spoken on Digital Securities and Globalization 4.0 at the Blockchain Center in Singapore where he shared his experience of advising one of the largest STO’s in Europe, Torus Global. His keynote on Asset Tokenization and STO’s is one of the most cited in the industry.
Karthik is regularly invited by leading banks and Fintech firms to advise on Blockchain and Smart contracts innovation. Having executed dozens of consulting engagements in the Banking, Financial services and insurance industries, he was invited to share his observations alongside the heads of Largest Banks in Indonesia on the Transformative Potential of Blockchain in the banking industry where Iyer shared his experience of executing Blockchain projects for Banks and Fintechs.
He was invited to Keynote at the largest fintech event in Vietnam alongside the heads of the leading banks in Vietnam at the Future of Finance Vietnam Summit where he described how DLT tech will challenge banks in the coming decades. He was invited to conduct a Blockchain innovation workshop for the heads of the top banks in Malaysia.
He advises leading fintech companies on Blockchain Disruption, Karthik was invited to advice and mentor Paypal on Blockchain Disruption for Payments. He was the Keynote speaker at Nasscom GIC and spoke to CEO’s of leading global Bank on Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s). He spoke on the coming Crypto world and its disruption in the payments space at the BANSEA-PayPal Summit. Karthik spoke alongside the Finance secretary at the Government of India, the Chief co-ordinator of India’s G20 leadership and the top CFO’s in November 2022 on how Blockchain’s can help India navigate in an uncertain world. Karthik was involved in a research project on the impact of CBDC's, Corporate Currencies such as Facebook’s Libra and JP Morgan Coin and Community owned currencies such as Bitcoin on the Global Financial System. He spoke on his research findings in Countries like Singapore, Hong Kong among others.
Karthik has advised governments and semi governmental institutions in various countries. Having executed consulting engagements on Blockchain for e-gov, Karthik was invited by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh to speak on Blockchain at the largest Fintech Event in India. Having researched and consulted on the impact of Blockchain's in the Audit and Compliance industry. He was recently invited to share his expertise at the prestigious CFA Society on Triple Entry Accounting and audit & compliance aspects of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies. He spoke alongside various world leaders on Blockchain & cryptocurrencies from a policy perspective at the Global Partnership Summit. Karthik recently spoke at India’s largest Blockchain Business Conference along side global experts on Blockchain policy and regulatory landscape.
He has contributed immensely to the growth and proliferation of DLT tech through his talks and mentoring around the globe. He was invited to speak and was felicitated by the Jain International trade organization (JITO) for his work on Blockchain. He spoke to a packed audience of Entrepreneurs at the Prestigious EO Organization on the need for entrepreneurs to build Blockchain based innovations. He keynoted at the Dubai Blockchain Summit where he educated the audience on real world applications of Web 3.0, Karthik was invited to keynote on Blockchain Disruptive innovations at Crypto Economy Conference in Mumbai where he spoke on the economic implications of Cryptos.
Karthik has worked extensively on Enterprise Blockchain adoption and mentored various organizations around the world. He spoke at the prestigious IIT Madras Research Park India’s top Engineering school on the Disruptive Potential of Ethereum and its use cases in the Enterprise. He was a mentor at the Fintegrate, India’s largest Blockchain Buildathon and was part of the CXO Panel where he described the massive list of use cases for DLT’s in improving organizational effeciency. He Spoke on the enterprise Blockchain applications beyond Fintech at the Singapore Blockchain Summit. He spoke alongside Consensys and Standard Charted Bank on Blockchain application in Banks at the IEEE Blockchain summit, where he shared his extensive experience from Blockchain implementations in Banking and Financial services. Karthik successfully executed a research project on the Blockchain's role in the fourth industrial revolution, He was interviewed by BBC's Teymoor Nabili where he shared his findings
Karthik has been passionate about topics such as financial inclusion and sustainability. He executed a project for a leading Agri producer on poverty reduction through Blockchain based identity and financial systems. He shared his findings when he Spoke in Boulder, co on the 10 trillion $ opportunity that Blockchain offers for people at the bottom of the pyramid in the Asian Continent in Discon.io. Karthik is an avid environmentalist and is inspired by the life and teachings of Arne Naess . He spends part of his wealth and time on environmental causes. He is in the board of advisors of various Climate tech companies such as 360Green in Singapore that does Carbon sequestration, Climat.today that helps companies track carbon in their supply chains and ClimateKUUL which helps travellers offset their Carbon footprint. Karthik is passionate about sharing his views on protecting the environment and biosphere and can often be seen in podcasts speaking about the urgent need to bring about sustainable living practices with the help of tech
His views have been widely published, in leading main-stream media across the planet
Karthik is a serial entrepreneur and founded Asia’s first applied Artificial Intelligence and social discovery company in the matching space. His smart matchmaking solution Spouseup used social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc to find matches, the company was acquired in 2017. He was featured by leading magazines and newspapers such as the Economist, Forbes, Times of India and others as a top innovator in the AI Space. He was part of the team that built one of the first tablet devices (before the iPad); successfully exited in 2008. He was a also a mentor for the One of the first wireless mesh companies that used blockchain to secure its network.
During his tenure at leading global companies such as Red Hat, Novell and Sun Microsystems, Karthik specialized in infrastructure related cyber defense and cyber security.
Having helped secure the data and networks of fortune 500 companies, He helped Governmental and Private Institutions build capabilities on Securing networks, operating systems and applications using a wide arrary of tech such as firewalls, Intrusion detection systems, application Armour, tripwires etc.
He was invited to speak alongside the top cyber security experts from India and Abroad at India’s largest cyber defense conference - NASSCOM DSCI. He has delivered thought leadership pieces on cyber defense at various organizations around the world.
Having built cutting edge skills in the state of the art in cryptography and cyber security, Karthik advises various Blockchain based enterprise privacy and cyber security companies that employ key technologies such as Zero Knowledge proof's, Trusted Computing etc. His company QuantumHermit specalizes in Quantum based key distribution and post quantum cyphers.
Karthik has been an avid follower of the Quantum Computing space since 2011 and has been an enthusiast.
He started QuantumHermit in 2018, a platform to progress the Quantum Computing ecosystem.
He Started QuantumHermit labs an R&D division of QuantumHermit focusing on Quantum Key Distribution, Post Quantum Cyphers, Applied Quantum Neural Networks to Machine Vision and Solving complex combinatorial optimization problems using Quantum circuit QED Machines.
His research also involved the impact of Quantum computing in Crypto. He has been interviewed widely on Quantum tech and has been a pioneer in the South Asian region in the quantum computing space.
Karthik is regularly invited to consult and speak on applications of Quantum in cyber security and AI. He has researched and assisted companies in the logistics, banking and cyber security industries.
Karthik spent 4 years at the University of Oslo as a PhD candidate where he conducted state of the art scientific research in Ecosystems and Innovation clusters. He published close to a dozen papers in leading international journals and conferences on the topic of building Platform Centric Ecosystems which are today key for the Survival of innovation oriented product companies and communities. Karthik has contributed to pioneering research in the field of ecosystem and innovation cluster building. During his PhD he also taught various masters courses and worked with leading scientists from Europe and the US. Some of his work on informatics and information economics was highly appreciated and cited.
Karthik has helped startups transition from products to platform centric ecosystems over the past decade. Karthik has a broad and illustrious education background from some of the TOP Schools in the world.
Karthik was invited by the Norwegian Government in August 2018 to Speak at the largest Political Event in Norway alongside the Norwegian Foreign Minister and other Key dignitaries. He spoke on emerging markets and Innovation in the South East Asian Context and Indo – Norwegian Collaboration.
He was invited to speak alongside the leaders of India and Japan at the Global Partnership Summit, where he spoke on how the future of emerging markets and technology adoption growth.
Karthik has been keenly interested in history and geopolitics, while pursuing his MBA at Fudan he published a series of papers which became the most downloaded papers of leading geopolitical journals. His Research paper on China is the most downloaded paper in the history of a leading journal and is used as course material for teaching students & professionals around the world.
He was the First Indian Columnist at the largest selling business newspaper in Norway DN where he wrote extensively on emerging markets. He Helped various companies expand into Asia. Karthik has deep networks across the Asian continent.
Karthik is passionate about non-profit work. He heads a project that donates used computers to rural schools and has helped set up computer centers in economically backward villages in India. He regularly donates a portion of his earnings to non-profits such as Save the children foundation and is actively engaged in social service programs such as feeding the poor and homeless.
He has a strong interest in spirituality and has meditated with monks in monasteries in India, Thailand and Japan. He often speaks at Spiritual Centers such as Auroville
Write to me at karthik@blockchainmonk.com