People Fundamentals #2: Emanuele Bolognesi – Almost-Aerospace Engineer Turned Crypto Trader

Welcome to the second edition of People Fundamentals – the interview mini series where you get to meet the many faces behind Nexo. While last week’s focus on Product Owner Elitsa centered around a leading mind on our product team, today our trading team is in the limelight, represented by Software Engineer, Emanuele Bolognesi.

Emanuele Bolognesi – Almost-Aerospace Engineer Turned Crypto Trader

1. Who are you? Describe yourself in a few words

Emanuele, 28, from Italy. I studied aerospace engineering at university, but my true passions are coding, crypto, the financial markets, and music. I also love unicorns.

2. How would you describe your digital personality #Meta-Identity? (Ex. Internet Aficionado, Social Recluse, Digital Doggo Freak)

I guess I am a Boomer.

3. You have all the resources you need; what do you want to create?

With all the resources I need, I want to focus on reforming education in my country and then in the rest of the world. I think school today is an obsolete system that aims at filling students with a lot of information but not really at educating them, which is what literally helps them find their way.

So I want to create a new concept of school, where people are given the opportunity and resources to understand, learn and practice what they are really good at doing. This topic is particularly close to my heart because in my experience at school I was so bored and there was so little space for creativity. Also I want to create more opportunities for musicians so that they are incentivised to produce new masterpieces instead of commercial garbage to make a salary.

4. How did you get into crypto? What’s your Nexo story?

I heard of crypto for the first time in 2017 from university friends, but I only seriously got into the space in October 2020. At first, I began learning about Bitcoin and Ethereum on a technical level. At a certain point I wanted to be a blockchain developer, but soon I became much more interested in the financial side, and I shifted my focus to the markets and trading.

I started working part-time at my day job while I developed a crypto trading bot as a freelancer for an organization. This went on for almost a year, then I found a job offer from Nexo on LinkedIn – I was looking to kickstart my career in a financial environment – and that’s what led me to where I am now.

5. What is your biggest challenge?

Becoming a profitable discretional trader (which means making money betting on the direction of the market without an automatic system). It is the hardest thing I have ever tried to accomplish. Some people even think it is impossible, but I don’t really believe in the efficient market hypothesis.

6. What is your biggest failure?

It probably wasn’t a single event but rather an entire period of my life. During my university years, I was too focused on studying for exams and didn’t take the time to understand what my interests and priorities really were. Now I feel like I wasted time.

7. How many hours do you sleep?

7-8 per night. Although, I think it would be more efficient to have a 30 minute nap after lunch and then sleep a couple of hours less during the night. Unfortunately at the moment we don’t have a place to sleep in the office…

8. What’s in your crypto survival kit?

• Twitter – that is where I get the most information about what’s happening in the space almost in real time and often with a level of detail that the mainstream media is not going to give you.
• Coingecko – for quick access to basic information on every existing coin or token.
• Messari – one of the best research websites for crypto.
• DeFi Llama – my favorite dashboard to monitor and get info about blockchains and protocols.
• Coin Bureau – my favorite crypto youtuber.

9. What coin are you most curious about?

With so much innovation happening in crypto, I can’t name a single coin. In fact, I am more interested in the applications of the various sectors than in the single projects or blockchains. For example, I am really fascinated by the concepts of tokenization of physical assets, the metaverse, the play-to-earn gaming model, liquidity pools, and yield farming to name a few.

10. Who’s on your must-follow list on Twitter?

Mostly traders, researchers, and personalities in crypto. Here’s a list of some of my favs: @FatManTerra, @DylanLeClair_, @SBF_FTX, @AriDavidPaul, @ercwl, @lawmaster, @Trader_Dante, @AlamedaTrabucco, @Pentosh1, @Trader_XO. I think it is super valuable – the insight that one can get for free from very competent and knowledgeable people who are just sharing their thoughts.

11. Who are you outside of work?

The same nerd I am at work. I spend most of my free time coding some personal projects (mainly related to automated trading and analysis on crypto markets), playing chess, and studying piano. When I was in Italy, I also used to play the electric guitar, compose electronic music, and ride my motorbike. Recently I started to go to the gym because it is among the firm’s benefits.

To me crypto is… a technological and financial revolution that will forever change the way we think about money, scarcity and value. What exact role it will have in our society, we’ll find out. Crypto is still in its infancy and a lot of technical and regulatory difficulties have to be overcome for it to become really mainstream. I don’t share the ideological vision that many maximalists have. Crypto is here to stay for sure and I am excited to be part of it at this moment.

Next Week on People Fundamentals

George from our Business Development team tunes in with wisdom and the inner workings of the mind behind the Nexo Brainer and many of Nexo’s strategic partnerships.