• Made/making Front Burner
  • ○ Supports effective prioritization while capturing the long tail of things worth remembering
  • ○ A board to visualize long term goals alongside short term tasks


• Working in the x402 ecosystem
  • ○ strategy, messaging, ops and design for x402.eco and x402 News
  • ○ Shoutout to our sponsors Solana and Base


• Running operations for OurNetwork, a research organization focused on onchain data, 2024-2026
  • ○ grew newsletter from 30,000 to 36,000 subscribers
  • ○ managed partnerships with $1B+ blockchains like Polygon, NEAR, and Sui
  • ○ developed editorial systems to serve community of 500+ data analysts
  • ○ modified Python code to create custom data visualizations (like this one)


• Worked as a reporter for The Defiant, a media company founded by a Bloomberg alumnus, 2021-2023
  • ○ produced 750+ articles generating 100,000s of page views
  • ○ interviewed industry leaders like Maria Shen, Nathan Allman, and Fredrik Haga
  • select articles:
    • ○ What's Governance Worth? Ethereum Scaling Tokens Say Billions
    • ○ Large CRV-backed Loans Threaten to Destabilize DeFi
    • ○ Tron Quietly Becomes the Leading Blockchain for Stablecoin Transfers


• A few essays from independent writing
  • ○ Productivity Spreadsheet (Aug. 17 2025)
  • ○ Reminder About Language (Aug. 13 2020)


• Some favorite books
  • ○ Central Banking 101 by Joseph Wang
  • ○ Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
  • ○ Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta
  • ○ Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
  • ○ All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
  • ○ How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
  • ○ Product Management in Practice by Matt LeMay
  • ○ The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
  • ○ Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
  • ○ Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • ○ Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert
  • ○ So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
  • ○ When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
  • ○ Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman


• Formally (and informally) educated
  • ○ BA in Economics from University of California Santa Cruz, Honors
  • ○ Regret declining acceptance to UC San Diego
  • select classes:
    • ○ International Finance
    • ○ Introduction to Programming (Accelerated)
    • ○ Securities Markets
    • ○ Policy Issues in the International Economy
    • ○ Two years of Japanese coursework including study abroad in Tokyo
    • ○ Applied Business Calculus
    • ○ Economics of E-Commerce
    • ○ Economic Rhetoric
    • ○ One year of Spanish and one year of French


• Has a few hobbies
  • ○ league (highlights: 1,2,3) and pickup basketball
  • ○ chess

email: owenfernau at gmail.com | x: @ofernau