Sunny Ray sits down with Han, founder of Autonomous, a legal infrastructure company for the web3 world. Han shares his path from six years at Goldman Sachs in London to founding two ventures, the second of which he sold to Lehman Brothers just months before its 2008 collapse. That timing led him straight into the Bitcoin whitepaper and, later, the earliest days of Ethereum, where he met Vitalik Buterin at a tiny San Francisco meetup around 2012. Han explains how those experiences shaped Autonomous, which helps thousands of web3 projects set up proper legal structures, and Autoco, a tool letting anyone spin up a company in seconds. The conversation covers what traditional finance taught him that crypto often ignores, why smart contracts can make evil actions technically impossible rather than just discouraged, and his current passion project, a decentralized, in-person school called DDU launching in September. Throughout, Han frames all of this work around one theme, building freedom tools that let people author their own lives outside centralized systems.
A Goldman Sachs banker turned Bitcoin believer explains how legal infrastructure and decentralized education became his freedom tools.
What's got you most excited these days?
Right now it's education. I'm building a nonprofit decentralized school called DDU, small d for decentralized, EDU for education. It's post venture for me, more about how we educate in the age of AI. I'm also excited about space, living in Miami I feel the SpaceX energy from the Space Coast launches nearby.
What were you doing in banking in London before any of this?
I graduated from the London School of Economics in the mid 90s and got recruited into banking. I spent six years at Goldman Sachs rotating through the bank, advising wealthy clients across asset classes. In 2001 I resigned to author my own life and started my first venture in London, before crypto existed.
What did working inside traditional finance teach you that most crypto people often miss?
That words count. In traditional finance you'd say '500 million of this bond done' on the phone and people relied on it. Crypto has a cavalier attitude toward people's word, a lot of drama came from people not being serious about what they promised or put in writing. That sanity check is missing.
What did you see in the Bitcoin white paper that immediately clicked for you?
It solved the double spend problem, how do you stop digital money being duplicated. Beyond that, its simplicity struck me. I think it's one of the key documents in human history, up there with the Declaration of Independence, explained with an incredible economy of words that unlocked a whole new economy.
Why did legal infrastructure become your wedge into web3?
Because it was largely absent. Early web3 people thought they could just push code without limited liability protections. Limited liability isn't a state invention, it grew organically from 17th century Dutch joint stock companies protecting investors. Crypto tossed that history aside, look at what happened with the DAO with zero legal infrastructure around it.
What do you mean by freedom tools?
Ventures that let people author their own life instead of centralized platforms owning your contribution, like Facebook. Company formation is one example, it lets you arbitrage jurisdictions. Our tool Autoco lets people spin up an LLC in six seconds with a wallet connected, most users come from South America where incorporating locally is a nightmare.
How do you think about trust, reputation, and enforcement in a more open system?
With smart contracts you move from 'don't do evil' to 'can't do evil' because the code prevents it. If shares were tokenized so you couldn't transfer them to a third party without my consent, that betrayal simply couldn't happen. Enforcement gets pushed into the code itself rather than relying on courts after the fact.
How does the decentralized school actually work day to day?
DDU launches in September as a Duna nonprofit out of Wyoming, owned by no one. Anyone can propose a course and find paying students to fill a classroom, no accreditation needed. Teaching happens live and in person, using AI just to structure course modules, because real understanding comes from interrogation, not from prompting.
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