Ben Delo

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Ben Delo
Delo at The Spectator's "Who’s afraid of Bitcoin?” conference, October 2018
Delo at The Spectator's "Who’s afraid of Bitcoin?” conference, October 2018
Born
Ben Peter Delo

(1984-02-24) 24 February 1984 (age 37)
Sheffield, England
EducationLord Williams's School
Worcester College, Oxford (BA)
OccupationMathematician, computer programmer, entrepreneur
Known forCo-founding BitMEX

Ben Delo (/dl/, born 24 February 1984) is a British mathematician, computer programmer, and entrepreneur.[1] He is a co-founder of BitMEX and according to The Sunday Times is Britain's youngest self-made billionaire.[1]

Early life and education[]

Born in Sheffield, Delo was educated at Lord Williams's School and graduated from the University of Oxford in 2005 with a double first-class honours degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.[2]

Career[]

Delo began his career as a software engineer at IBM, where he was named as an inventor on several patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the Intellectual Property Office.[3]

He then went on to develop high-frequency trading systems at hedge funds and banks such as GSA Capital and J.P. Morgan, dealing predominantly in kdb+/Q.[4] His expertise covers the design, architecture, and implementation of quantitative infrastructure, systems, and tools.

In 2014, Delo met Arthur Hayes and Sam Reed, and they co-founded BitMEX, a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform.[5]

Philanthropy[]

In October 2018, Delo gave £5 million to his Oxford alma mater Worcester College, endowing two teaching fellowships in perpetuity and becoming the youngest major donor in the College's history.[2]

In April 2019, Delo signed The Giving Pledge, a programme orchestrated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, announcing his intention to give away at least half of his wealth during his lifetime. In his pledge letter, Delo states that his initial philanthropic interests are focused on long-term and large-scale problems and reducing catastrophic risks, and that he is inspired by the philosophy of effective altruism.[6]

That month, Delo also became a member of Giving What We Can, a community of people who have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities.[7][8]

In March 2020, in collaboration with Oxford University, Delo initiated and funded a cross-sectional survey, using nanopore technology (which sequences the whole genome of pathogens) as a diagnostic tool, to determine and level of community-based infection of COVID-19 in the UK. According to Professor Mike Bonsall, “Using rapid diagnostics, we will explore a new method of pathogen detection, which if widely adopted could prove crucial to early containment of future novel disease outbreaks.”[9]

Criminal charges in the United States[]

On 1 October 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the US Department of Justice simultaneously formally charged BitMEX and its co-founders, including Ben Delo, with various violations of American law. Delo and three others were criminally charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act for allegedly failing to implement an adequate anti-money laundering program. Further, regulators alleged that the BitMEX trading platform was required to have registered aspects of its operations in the US and had failed to do so. According to a spokesman for BitMEX’s parent company, Delo and his co-founders “intend to defend the allegations vigorously”.[10]

References[]

  1. ^ a b "Where's Wallet? Can you spot Ben Delo, the UK's first bitcoin billionaire?". The Times. 1 July 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Ben Delo gives £5 million to the College". Worcester College, Oxford. 26 October 2018.
  3. ^ "Google Patents". patents.google.com.
  4. ^ "Bored With Banking, This Former Citi Trader Went Full Crypto". Bloomberg L.P. 1 February 2018.
  5. ^ "Breaking the bank". The Spectator. 10 November 2018.
  6. ^ Delo, Ben (15 April 2019). "Ben Delo". The Giving Pledge. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  7. ^ "Co-funding Partnership with Ben Delo". Open Philanthropy. 11 November 2019. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  8. ^ "List of Giving What We Can Pledge Members". www.givingwhatwecan.org. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  9. ^ "Researchers to determine community COVID-19 infection rates in the UK using serology, PCR and Nanopore Sequencing Technology". Oxford Department of Zoology. 4 April 2020.
  10. ^ Stempel, Jonathan (1 October 2020). "U.S. charges BitMEX cryptocurrency founders with failing to prevent money laundering". Reuters. New York. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020. Retrieved 1 October 2020.

External links[]

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