When I knew I was going to be interviewing Amaury, I saw it as an opportunity to speak with one of the most intelligent people in all of crypto. I was excited to hear his takes on the industry as a whole, but especially about the eCash project specifically.
What I wasn’t expecting was to learn more about Amaury himself. For example, I realized early on in our conversation that he wasn’t much of a dreamer, and more of a doer. He didn’t get into programming because he dreamed of becoming a founder or building a startup, he learned to code because he liked doing it. In other words, he doesn’t do things because of some lofty goal, he does things just because he can.
My second observation about Amaury was he has a lot of humility. But I’m not talking about the kind of humility you might be thinking of. Amaury isn’t the type of person who thinks less of himself, but rather the type of person who thinks of himself, less. Whereas others perceive the world as revolving around them, Amaury seems focused on perceiving the world he finds himself in.
Both of these traits were made evident when he spoke about his experience competing in the Rubik’s cube world championships. In a short period of time, he had managed to become world class in speed cubing, not because he had ever dreamed of becoming the fastest in the world at solving a Rubik’s cube, but because he enjoyed doing it and trained hard to become good at it.
For some, becoming world class in anything might make them think they are better than other people somehow, but that wasn’t how Amaury saw it. Rather than believe he was special in some way, it made him see that nobody was special: