Patrick Carey Is Building a Finance That Operates Autonomously Without Traditional Gatekeepers

Patrick Carey grew up in northern England watching his father build machines from scratch. His father was a computer engineer and inventor who later became head of IT at a major UK financial institution. "Watching him excel at something he was naturally gifted at left a lasting impression on me," Carey says.

By the time home computers arrived in the eighties, Carey was hooked. "My own interest in computing began early, during the first gaming boom, when computers were primitive, and games had to be loaded from tapes and floppy disks."

He later launched a consulting firm and worked with global banks on various financial systems projects.

That experience shaped his view of how finance works at scale. "The systems that power major financial institutions are often decades old, originally written in languages like Assembler, COBOL, or Pascal," he says. "Early on, I learned that these systems can't simply be replaced. Rewriting them carries enormous risk, not just for the institution but for the broader economy that relies on them."

Those lessons still guide him. "Managing risk in these environments requires meticulous planning, extensive testing, and always having a rollback path," he says. "Even imperfect systems demand caution, because failures can ripple far beyond finance, into aerospace, e-commerce, and beyond."

But Carey also understood the limits of that world. "Traditional finance is deeply rooted, and influence often dictates who can innovate," he says. After the 2008 financial crisis, he began exploring decentralized systems that could distribute trust more evenly. "Blockchain changes that dynamic," he says. "It removes intermediaries, creates transparency, and provides a shared infrastructure that anyone can build on."

The move into crypto was less rebellion than curiosity. "It wasn't frustration that drove me to crypto and DeFi," he says. "After fifteen years in traditional finance, it felt like the right moment for a shift. What drew me in was curiosity and the possibilities this space opened: capital moving freely, accessible to anyone regardless of background, and the chance to rethink how finance could work."

That shift became permanent. Today, Carey is the CTO of CoinTerminal, a leading on-chain fundraising platform with more than six hundred thousand users. "Decentralized fundraising works best when trust and accountability are baked into every layer," he says. "Every raise is visible on-chain, and vesting schedules are enforced automatically."

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CoinTerminal's refundable token model aims to provide investors with an added layer of protection not always present in traditional finance. "To reduce risk, we offer refundable sales, giving investors the ability to monitor a token's performance post-launch and reclaim their investment if the project doesn't meet expectations," Carey says.

Security remains his first rule. "You can have the best product, but if it's not secure, it can collapse overnight," he says. But speed matters too. "Payments and on-chain systems evolve faster than traditional finance ever did, so we must innovate quickly while staying grounded in secure, well-tested foundations."

Carey's idea of "good architecture" hasn't changed since his banking days. "For me, good architecture comes down to one principle: simplicity," he says. "A well-architected system is modular, with components that are clearly understood and isolated enough to contain failures."

He applies the same discipline to all of his pursuits. "From my perspective, crypto becomes usable at scale when it integrates seamlessly into everyday life," he says. "People need to spend, earn, and manage it as effortlessly as cash, without high fees or reliance on traditional banking."

That focus on usability connects his past and present. Whether it was reconciling billions for banks or building smart-contract wallets, Carey's work has always been about reliability. "Most of the software around major chains has been production-ready for maybe the last five to seven years," he says. "That makes building for mass adoption uniquely difficult. You're constantly trying to pick the right partners and tools in a space where innovation moves two or three times faster than the rest of the software industry."

Looking ahead, Carey sees blockchain and AI converging. "Blockchain provides verifiable data and ownership, while AI brings interpretation and pattern recognition," he says. "Together they form systems that can make decisions intelligently while remaining transparent and accountable."

He believes the next decade will complete the merger of traditional finance and programmable infrastructure. "The migration of traditional finance onto Web3 rails is well underway," he says. "The truly transformative shift will come when banking rails themselves go on-chain. When deposits, settlement, and custody all happen natively on-chain, the line between banking and DeFi disappears."

After twenty-four years of designing and securing financial systems, Carey sounds less like a disruptor than a systems engineer describing the next version of the same machine. He spent his life designing financial systems. The only difference now is that the system is finally open.