Stephen Pair has over 20 years of experience building software systems in the financial and telecommunications industries. He has held various roles including entrepreneur, architect, manager, team lead, and developer. He started programming at a young age on his dad’s TRS-80 Model 1 (circa 1978) and spent much of his early career focused on languages, compilers, operating systems and virtual machines. During the 1990s, he developed an interest in the mechanics of financial markets, economics, and monetary systems and the question of how they might evolve as the global Internet developed. He closely followed developments in cryptography along with attempts at creating new electronic money and accounting systems. This background led to the formation of Bitpay.com with his business partner Tony. He holds two patents in the field of streaming analytics along with several additional filings, some of which are still pending.