aVIRAL Podcast

Welcome to the third episode of the aVIRAL Podcast, recorded at The Network School — a global startup society of curious minds, nomads, and builders! 🌍

In this episode, I sit down with Christoph, a 20-year tech veteran, serial entrepreneur, and co-founder of MC² Finance — a groundbreaking project bringing institutional DeFi strategies to traditional stock exchanges.

We dive deep into:
🔹 From teen party organizer to dot-com survivor – His unconventional path through the 2000s tech chaos
🔹 Why he dropped out at 16 – How failing school fueled his startup mentality
🔹 Building Austria’s first news website – Manual HTML uploads & surviving the dot-com crash
🔹 Crypto’s institutional future – Why compliant DeFi ETFs will onboard 100M users
🔹 Account abstraction & AI agents – Simplifying crypto for mass adoption
🔹 Network States as innovation hubs – Why decentralized communities beat bureaucracy

Christoph’s journey—from coding Bayesian filters for newspapers to mining Bitcoin in 2011 and now bridging TradFi/DeFi—is a masterclass in 10x thinking. If you’re into crypto infrastructure, regulatory hacks, or building through bear markets, don’t miss this.

🎙️ aVIRAL Podcast — A podcast series where stories spark ideas. Hosted by Aviral, straight from the heart of Network School

Chapters:
00:00 WATCH TILL THE END
00:00:48 Introduction & Early Life
00:06:06 Building First German-speaking Online Newspaper
00:12:38 Mobile Betting and Early Tech Leadership
00:16:11 Startup Weekends & Hackathon Experience
00:21:25 Behavioral Psychology Health App
00:26:47 Real Estate Search Engine & AI Lessons
00:36:07 Conference Digitization Project
00:41:15 Early Bitcoin Mining Experience
00:43:12 Culture & NFT Accelerator
00:52:19 Founding MC² Finance and DeFi Insights
01:07:00 Network State & Future of Communities