By challenging convention, Canada's cryptocurrency pioneer is solving the future of human organization one question at a time.
BY GIOVANNA G. BONOMO
February, 2025
Pity the brave (but misguided) soul who tries to tell Di Iorio “that’s just how it’s done”—they’ll soon find themselves on the receiving end of his methodical dismantling of every inefficient assumption they’ve ever held dear, delivered with the kind of gleeful precision that only comes from someone who’s made a career out of problem solving.The relationship between individuals and institutions isn’t just flawed—it’s fundamentally broken, according to the Ethereum co- founder. Seeing patterns of institutional failure stretching from the fall of the Roman Empire through to our modern era, his mission isn’t to “fix” the system but to challenge the fabric of society and liberate people from its constraints entirely by finding solutions to questions few dare to ask:
Why do we remain chained to institutions that have repeatedly failed us throughout history?
Why do we continue to surrender our autonomy to third parties we never chose to trust?
Why do we accept systems that diminish individual sovereignty rather than enhance it?
These aren’t just philosophical musings—they’re a blueprint for individual and societal longevity.
From Necessity comes Innovation
The Di Iorio story begins in a small mountain town called Pietrabbondante, two hours outside of Rome.When there was nothing left for them there, Di Iorio’s grandfather and his three sons, including Anthony’s father Lino who was only three at the time, left Italy for Canada.“They worked their butts off” in construction before building a sliding door manufacturing business that would span over three decades. Though English became his father’s first language, the family kept their Italian heritage alive at home through language and culture—a bridge between old world craftsmanship and new world innovation that would later influence Anthony’s own approach to building and problem-solving.
Raised north of Toronto in Gormley and then Richmond Hill, Ontario, a curious young Anthony Di Iorio watched his father embody the essence of what it means to be an innovator. His father Lino carried with him an unrelenting drive to question and improve everything he touched. “My father was always the engineer of the problem solver, the inventor, and the questioner of why, is there a better way to do things?” Anthony recalls. “That’s something that was instilled in me. Why, why, why? And is there a better way? Growing up in a house with an entrepreneur and an inventor and a fixer and a handyman and somebody that just would be driven nuts when something didn’t make sense to him and figuring out how to solve the problem.” This inheritance of innovation manifested early. While Lino, a University of Waterloo graduate and former IBM employee, built with his brothers and cousin a successful sliding door manufac- turing business spanning three decades, he never stopped looking for new problems to solve. After a single encounter with curling, he revolutionized the sport by reinventing its fundamental equipment. His company, BalancePlus Curling Equipment, would become one of the world’s leading manufacturers, with the technology he created earning him induction into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame...