summary: Riccardo Spagni is a maintainer of the privacy-preserving digital currency, Monero. He is also the co-founder of GloBee, a cryptocurrency-payment processor, and...
content: Ricardo Spagni also known as Fluffypony is a maintainer of the Monero project, a privacy-preserving cryptocurrency. A passionate Bitcoin and cryptocurrency enthusiast, Riccardo has dedicated his life to building and advancing the cryptocurrency industry. His enthusiasm for the project has helped Monero become one of the most popular digital currencies and he continues to be an active and vocal advocate for the project. Riccardo is an experienced software developer and has made a number of contributions to open-source projects, including the Monero project. He is also an avid traveler and has spoken at numerous conferences around the world on topics related to cryptocurrency and privacy. Career Riccardo Spagni is a member of the Monero Core Team, who stewards the Monero Project. He has an academic background in informatics and logistics and has spent many years in software development, before starting a business in the import/export industry with his wife. Due to the success of that business, he had enough freedom to start tinkering with Bitcoin early in 2011. In 2012, he became involved in various cryptocurrency-related projects, and in 2016 he launched Globee, a cryptocurrency payment processor. In 2014, Spagni created and launched MyMonero, a wallet to use Monero on desktop and mobile. He was also a lead maintainer and a contributor of Monero, a privacy-preserving digital currency where he was responsible for executing the release procedures in Github repositories. After five years at Monero, Riccardo stepped down as lead maintainer on 16th December 2019 but remained as maintainer of the project. "I'm stepping back as lead maintainer, but continuing on as a maintainer, to further decentralise the project. I've been talking about doing this for two years, since I stepped back as lead maintainer on the Monero website and Monero GUI projects, so it should come as no surprise." - Riccardo Spagni told DeCrypt Riccardo Spagni is currently building Tari, a blockchain-based, decentralized assets protocol built in Rust, private by default, open-source, and is being architected as a merge-mined sidechain with Monero. Controversy Riccardo Spagni was arrested in Nashville, Tennesse on July 20, 2021, on fraud charges tied to alleged offenses in South Africa between 2009 and 2011. Spagni was on board a private jet scheduled to fly to Los Cabos, Mexico when he was apprehended in Nashville during a scheduled refueling stop, according to court documents. The arrest was made at the request of the South African government, seeking Spagni’s extradition on fraud charges. The charges, unrelated to Spagni’s role at Monero, were tied to his previous employment as an information technology manager at a company called Cape Cookies alleging he “used false information” to create invoices that inflated the prices for certain goods and services and had funds transferred to a bank account he controlled. After a month in custody, Riccardo was released in September 2021. In a tweet, Spagni said he was working with his legal team to return to South Africa to address the allegations against him. I am very pleased that the U.S. court has released me. I am actively working with my attorneys on a way to return to South Africa as soon as possible so I can address this matter and get it behind me once and for all. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. In a court filing for the Middle District of Tennessee, Magistrate Judge Alistair Newbern ordered Spagni to surrender to U.S. Marshals on July 5, 2022, for extradition to South Africa. Personal Life Riccardo Spagni and his wife live along the Garden Route, Plettenberg Bay on the coast of South Africa, where he spends weekends packrafting, hanging out with their dogs, building and flying multi-copters, and playing with LEGO. 