Best known for minting the first NFTs, here are some key points about my background, interests, and what led me to experiment with crypto tokens.

Education

I graduated with a Master’s Degree from the Norwegian School of Economics in 2010. My major is in Economic Analysis, which consists of theoretical / mathematical subjects such as game theory and financial modelling.

Two summers were spent at Harvard to study computer science.

Trading

I financed my student years by trading stocks, primarily through day-trading and arbitrage. My blog at the time, Developing Trader, explored ideas around markets. I interned for the hedge fund legend Victor Niederhoffer.

I first heard about Bitcoin during my 2011 internship.

Economics Game

In 2008 I made a Facebook app, The Friendonomy, where a currency was issued based on good deeds. Unfortunately, the game never took off and not much documentation is preserved.

Business

In 2012 I started an apartment rental business. This is still my main occupation.

Writing

Non-fiction writing is a hobby of mine. Apart from blog posts, I occasionally explore a topic deeper and produce a pdf booklet.

Crypto

While writing a book about Bitcoin in June 2014, I discovered the token platform Counterparty. I realized that this new tech would revolutionize financing of authors, artists and small businesses. To prove my point I issued scarce tokens representing the book, which I sold at a symbolic prize. This turned out to be the first so-called 1/N edition NFT.

At the same time I issued a unique token, OLGA, to my girlfriend, now wife. This is the first known non-fungible token, i.e. the first literal NFT.

In 2016 I made a wallet for Counterparty which won the first prize in the Devparty Contest. Still to this date, I contribute with code to my Github directory.

Sports

My favorite activities are inline skating in summer and ice hockey in winter. My YouTube channel How To Inline Skate has more than 25,000 subscribers, with some videos having reached more than a million views. Most of the videos were recorded in 2015-17 but I still attempt to upload whenever I have time and inspiration.