Rohas Nagpal

About Rohas Nagpal

 
image

I am the Chief Blockchain Architect of the Hybrid Finance Blockchain (HyFi) and author of the Crypto Playbook. I am a columnist for NDTV and Mint and conduct the free Web3 Developer Course. I also mentor early stage Blockchain startups.

How it started...

I come from a military family so I had the great fortune of growing up in many cities and attending many schools.

I started my career in the early 1990s as a hacker. Those were the days of Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows NT & Novell NetWare.

My life-long love affair with Cryptography started when I chanced upon David Chaum's work on blind digital signatures and the "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" by Menezes, Oorschot & Vanstonemy.

Cyber crime investigation...

In 1999, I co-founded Asian School of Cyber Laws.

Over the next 16 years, I worked in cyber investigation & cyberlaw. I proudly count some of the best investigators & lawyers amongst my students.

I have also had the privilege of assisting the Govt. of India in framing draft rules under the Information Technology Act.

My work spanned 18 countries and I have investigated cyber crimes & data breaches for hundreds of organizations across many sectors - from aerospace & banking to law enforcement, pharma & shipping.

I also had the privilege of leading the teams that developed "Collaborative Online Investigation Network" & the "ASCL Volatile Evidence Retrieval Tool".

I authored the Cyber Crime Investigation Manual, which has been referred to as a "bible for cybercrime investigators" by the Times of India.

Blockchain & crypto...

I first heard of Bitcoin in 2011, when I was assisting the police in a case involving the drug mafia. I found the concept fascinating and even mined some bitcoins.

And then I made one of my biggest mistakes. I "deleted" my bitcoins!

In 2015, I decided to move into the blockchain space. I barricaded myself at home and spent 4 months studying bitcoin technology and setting up multichain blockchains.

In 2016, I co-founded Primechain along with Shinam Arora, a brilliant engineer, and long-time colleague.

We also co-founded BankChain - a community of 37 banks plus IBM, Microsoft & Intel. Our core product was a "self-building" blockchain ecosystem with a web app, PWA, and a Blockchain REST API service.

The project went into hibernation in early 2018 after the Reserve Bank of India's ban on crypto.

I continued as a Blockchain Architect for some very interesting projects.

In 2020, after the Supreme Court struck down the RBI ban, I became actively involved with the crypto industry.

Currently, I am the Chief Blockchain Architect of the Hybrid Finance Blockchain (HyFi).

I have authored the Crypto Playbook and I write weekly columns for NDTV and Mint.

To add more logic and math to crypto price predictions, I have developed the ROHAS Crypto Asset Valuation Engine.

I also conduct the free Web3 Developer Course.

I also mentor early-stage Blockchain / Crypto / DeFi / Web3 startups.

Some of my publications