Company Info for lightning.engineering | IcebreakerMembers
I’m a 10 year Bitcoin veteran with a love for Bitcoin, technology, and freedom.
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I began my Bitcoin journey in 2014, when I built GPU mining rigs with friends in high school.
At UC Berkeley, I was heavily involved in the Bitcoin / blockchain community. Over three years as President, I transformed the ragtag student club into a mature organization called Blockchain at Berkeley with over 100 members, multiple university-recognized courses, a vibrant Berkeley Bitcoin Meetup, and proof-of-concept development for Fortune 500 companies. I mentored many brilliant students who went on to build prominent blockchain companies and protocols or contribute to open-source, even Bitcoin Core.
During this time, I cowrote the world's first undergraduate cryptocurrency course, and taught numerous blockchain executive education programs for Berkeley Law and Berkeley Haas. I spoke for numerous governments, NGOs, universities, companies, conferences, and meetups around the world. At the age of 22, I taught a blockchain course as an Adjunct Professor at Berkeley Law.
Sometime in 2019, I felt I needed to step back and figure out what I should work on next. I learned about global issues and stayed up-to-date with cutting-edge technologies. I studied the tyranny of North Korea. I researched censorship, mass surveillance, human rights abuses, and repression by governments worldwide. I learned what "freedom" really means, at the same time that I felt most of the blockchain industry had lost sight of its founding principles in favor of making money off of vaporware.
This gave me a sharp focus on Bitcoin, Lightning and other freedom-enhancing tech. VPNs and satellites help break down the information barriers that make tyranny possible. Encryption protects users from prying eyes. Bitcoin and Lightning provide an incorruptible money and payments system for the billions of people around the world who don't have access to a stable fiat currency, or who must pay exorbitant fees to send money across borders. People around the world need alternatives to the systems that have failed them.
Today, I’m working on a Bitcoin and Lightning wallet called Lexe which has a vastly improved UX over existing options and doesn’t compromise on core Bitcoin values of censorship-resistance and self-custody. Our goal is to accelerate Lightning adoption by making Lightning dead simple to use. Learn more at https://lexe.app .
hello.linkedin (at) maxfa.ng
github.com/maxfangx 
If you’re building an early stage company that meets any of the below criteria, would love to connect. Send me a DM on Linkedin or email chris [at] race.capital
I’m the co-founder of Race Capital in San Francisco with Alfred Chuang, and Edith Yeung. We’re an early stage venture capital fund that lead pre-seed and seed stage technology startups, typically with a first check of $2M-$6M.
We’re most interested in all things in the enterprise/b2b space (collaboration, fintech infrastructure, privacy, security, open source, automation), especially anything within the infrastructure layers of the stack: API’s, developer tools, transaction systems, embedded systems, etc.
We like investing at the seed stage because it allows us to have the greatest impact. We take a founders’ first, investor second, approach and we love to roll up our sleeves and help with strategy, distribution, go-to market, customers, hiring, marketing, and press. 
