CTO and hands-on architect for fintech, payments, blockchain, and AI systems.
20+ years building regulated and high-reliability systems. I help founders and teams make the hard technical calls: architecture, delivery, compliance, and engineering culture, without waiting on a full-time hire.
CTO and co-founder · 2023 to present
Air rights (the legal right to use space above land) had no liquid market. The product had to span drones, proptech, consumer, enterprise, and government, on-chain and off.
Owned technology strategy and architecture across Solana, web, mobile, and backend. Led a team of up to 20 through three product lines.
Launched B2C, B2B, and B2Gov lines and supported successful fundraising.
CTO · 2018 to 2022
The first MiFID II regulated crypto firm needed a peer-to-peer derivatives product live under the license, not as a sandbox demo. Architecture, QA, and security all sat on the critical path.
Started as a part-time architect, then owned end-to-end delivery: Ethereum L2 state channels, certification evidence, and the security bar regulators actually check.
Product went live; Malta MiFID II license obtained.
Team leader and architect · 2013 to 2018
A PCI DSS Level 1 gateway serving large gaming and e-commerce clients had to stay reliable while integrating 100+ payment rails and AML controls.
Led distributed teams across Gibraltar, Malta, and Romania. Built payment integrations and risk subsystems; introduced CI and quality tooling at scale.
Gateway held PCI L1 under load. Business later acquired by EVO Payments.
CTO · 2022 to 2023
An NFT-focused software house needed white-label launchpad, marketplace, and issuance tooling that could ship on more than one chain without becoming unmaintainable.
Set the architecture and first prototype; led a team of up to 15. Delivered Ethereum, Polygon, and ImmutableX integrations.
Three-chain platform in production, with a stack the team could keep shipping on.
CTO, Architect · 2022 to 2024
Crypto has trading rails but no simple way to choose volatility without margin calls and liquidations.
Architected SMART tokens (RiskON / RiskOFF) that split BTC and ETH exposure, plus TokenFactory, Orchestrator, and Elastic Supply Pool in upgradeable Solidity. Hired the founding engineering team; off-chain risk engine, on-chain settlement.
Protocol and app live at riskprotocol.io.
Co-founder, CTO and COO · 2021 to present
Buying LATAM property remotely meant travel, opaque paperwork, and no portal built for that path.
Built the first platform and the remote operating model. Hired across IT, marketing, sales, and business development, and still co-run operations.
Portal live at jhely.com for Spanish-speaking LATAM and Europe.
Architected the solution · 2025 to present
Founders already pay for chat AI and still copy-paste into email, CRM, and calendar. Pooled products share a brain across customers.
Designed the control plane: dedicated per-user workspace, Slack and Telegram agents, tool routing (MCP), billing, and the rule that platform secrets never land on a user VM.
Product live at john.ceo.
Senior technical voice for founders and boards: roadmap, hiring, vendor calls, and the decisions that should not wait on a full-time CTO search.
Design and delivery for payments, compliance-aware systems, and on/off-chain products, including the parts that have to survive audit.
Partner with operators who already have GTM. I own the product and engineering side of building something real.
A practical snippet for geo-blocking on frontend-only and IPFS-hosted sites.
How blockchain fintech actually formed — crisis, recombination, regulation, and user-led invention.
Traceability and deniability look different for businesses, governments, and criminals.