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| Place of birth | Denmark |
| Place of residence | Sealand Region, Denmark |
| Category | Founders, Technology |
| Alma mater | Copenhagen Business School |
| Known for | Founding MakerDAO and launching the DAI Stablecoin |
Biography:
Based in Copenhagen, Rune Christensen is the CEO and co-founder of MakerDAO, which issues Dai, the world’s first stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain. Since 2015, Christensen has focused on establishing the vision and organizational structure of the Maker Decentralized Autonomous Organization and the economic foundations of the Dai stable digital currency. He is also fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Rune Christensen's 2019:
One of the strongest currents in the Ethereum space throughout 2019 was the growing ecosystem of decentralized finance applications, with MakerDAO and the Dai stablecoin playing a key role in this shift in narrative and developer focus. MakerDAO partnered with various projects throughout the year in an effort to expand the accessiblity and use of Dai. In September, MakerDAO announced a developer grant and collaboration with blockchain-based freelance platform Opolis to bring Dai payments to the freelancer gig economy. In August, MakerDAO partnered with London-based banking alternative venture Monolith to bring Dai payments to its Visa debit card.
At the close of the year, MakeDAO announced a sale of $27.5 milllion in MKR tokens to Dragonfly Capital Partners and Paradigm to bring DeFi to Asian markets. The biggest technical update in the MakerDAO platform was the launch of Multi-Collateral Dai in November, which will broaden the collateralized assets backing Dai beyond Ethereum.
What Cointelegraph expects for 2020:
Following the impressive momentum of the DeFi movement in 2019, we expect this year to see a steady rhythm of protocol updates for the MakerDAO platform and maturation of the entire DeFi ecosystem of applications on Ethereum. While we anticipate great technical strides in the DeFi space, the great question will be the extent of its social adoption.