- Digital Currency Initiative (DCI)
Mark Weber (@markrweber) is a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative, a research group focused on decentralizing trust and disrupting power structures with cryptographic peer-to-peer exchange and distributed systems. Mark leads the DCI's research on reimagining asset registries and how they plug into financial systems, the purpose of which is to drive financial inclusion, animate prosperity, and make for safer derivatives markets. Mark also manages DCI's student working groups, cross-functional teams of students from across MIT who work together to hack on pressing issues connected to cryptocurrencies and related technologies.
Mark's background is political economy and development. He is the co-producer of the critically acclaimed documentary film, Poverty, Inc., which is available on Netflix and has earned over 50 international film festival honors, the $100,000 Templeton Freedom award, and TV broadcast deals in 12 countries. Based on several years of research including 200 interviews from 20 countries, the film offers a critique of the Western development establishment and its tendency to undermine local entrepreneurs and political leaders. Learn more and see Mark's post-screening Q&A's at www.povertyinc.org.
Mark has given over 100 public speaking engagements for universities, including Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Stanford, NYU, Penn, Cornell, and Copenhagen Business School, as well as for high schools, companies, and nonprofit organizations around the world.
Mark is a graduate of the “Great Books” program at the University of Notre Dame, an intensive admittance-by-application program in philosophy, history, economics, science, and literature. His recreational joy is ultra marathon mountain running.
Mark is also pursuing an MBA in finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Email Mark at mrweber@mit.edu and follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @markrweber.