The Block CEO Larry Cermak sat down with Mysten Labs Co-Founder and Chief Cryptographer Kostas Kryptos Chalkias to kick off the inaugural fireside chat at Emergence, The Block’s first-ever conference. Illuminated by floor-to-ceiling screens on the main stage at the Prague Congress Center, the chat spanned Chalkias' technical background, Satoshi, and how he sees artificial intelligence changing the crypto industry.
Chalkias began describing his initial foray into AI with Betmanager, a platform that aimed to predict soccer game results using stock market techniques. He pivoted to cryptography and security after contacting Mike Hearn, an early bitcoin developer and user who also served as the lead platform engineer for the permissioned blockchain platform R3.
"Mike told me: 'Look, either you stay in academia or you come here and work officially for the blockchain industry,'" Chalkias said on the Emergence main stage.
That's how he later joined Libra, a stablecoin project also known as Diem, at the tech giant Meta (previously Facebook). Chalkias helmed cryptography and blockchain research efforts for Libra/Diem blockchain and Meta's digital wallet, Novi. However, following years of regulatory trouble in the United States, Meta sold Libra to the crypto bank Silvergate in 2022.
Chalkias co-founded the web3 infrastructure firm Mysten Labs, which develops the Layer 1 blockchain Sui. Sui’s native token traded at $3.82 as of 4:01 a.m. ET (9:01 UTC) on Dec. 5, according to The Block’s Sui Price Page. In the past 24 hours, the token’s price increased 2.89% and saw $3 billion in trading volume.
'Kryptos'
After discussing his background, Chalkias explained the story behind his middle name, "Kryptos." The word means “secret" or "hidden" in Greek, Chalkias' heritage, and is also the first name of his son.
"I managed to convince my wife because in the first permissioned network that I told you, my director, he promised to give me one of the best bonuses in the company if I can convince my wife," Chalkias said. He added this son was richer than he was for a while because of the bonus, as R3 held ballooning holdings of the cryptocurrency XRP.
"And then we said, look, it's a Greek name, now it's the first name of my son, let's put it as a family name, as a middle name, for us," Chalkias said. "If I had an extra kid, probably I would find something else — again in the crypto space."
AI, crypto and the future
In addition to possibly naming his children after web3 staples, Chalkias's vision for the future includes AI becoming the norm in the crypto industry.
Specifically, he sees AI augmenting “smart wallets,” which can improve accessibility for crypto novices, as well as parallelization of blockchain among other payment platforms. "Eventually, blockchain will surpass even Visa" for speed of transaction, Chalkias said.
“It will be the norm. I don’t see how we can escape from this," Chalkias concluded.
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