Nevin Freeman is the co-founder and CEO of Reserve Protocol, an asset-backed stablecoin platform built to hold value for people in high-inflation economies. He first encountered Bitcoin in 2011 and concluded it moved too much to work as everyday money, a conclusion that pushed him toward building Reserve instead. Freeman also serves as president of Confusion Capital, one of two companies Reserve launched in January 2024 to fund the protocol’s development.
Who Is Nevin Freeman?
Freeman graduated from Portland State University with a bachelor’s degree in 2009. That same year, he co-founded RIABiz, a trade publication for independent financial advisors, building the site’s publishing platform on Google App Engine and serving as chief technology officer until 2011.
According to the Hidden Forces podcast, Freeman said he discovered Bitcoin in 2011 while immersing himself in a community focused on global catastrophic risks and long-term problem-solving.
He initially found the concept intriguing but later questioned whether Bitcoin’s fixed supply could support stable, everyday use. He is one of several founders covered in our crypto personalities series who describe an early skepticism of Bitcoin, rather than enthusiasm for it, as the spark for their crypto career.
After RIABiz, Freeman co-founded MetaMed Research, a personalized medical research company, serving as chief information officer for roughly a year. In January 2016, he co-founded Paradigm Academy, a Bay Area company builder that trained and recruited founders. He left that role in 2017 to start Reserve, carrying forward his conclusion that Bitcoin’s volatility made it a poor fit for people trying to protect savings from inflation.
Nevin Freeman’s Career and Contributions
Freeman co-founded Reserve Protocol with Matt Elder in 2017. In his speaker bio for the upcoming Crypto Fest conference, Freeman describes the origin plainly: he and Elder set out to build a stable cryptocurrency for people living through hyperinflation.
As CEO, Freeman oversees strategy, legal work, and team coordination, while Elder, previously an engineer at Google and Quixey, built out the protocol’s technical architecture as chief technology officer.
Reserve’s product evolved from an early stablecoin pilot in Venezuela into RSV, then into a broader system of RTokens, stablecoins backed by baskets of collateral rather than a single asset. In January 2024, Reserve launched two additional companies, ABC Labs and Confusion Capital, to support the protocol’s growth. Freeman took on the role of president at Confusion Capital while remaining CEO of Reserve.
In a blog post about Reserve on Medium, Freeman introduced the Reserve Index Protocol, describing a goal of positioning Reserve as a decentralized alternative to BlackRock’s index products.
By March 2026, he was posting regular protocol updates on X detailing the rollout of Index Protocol 5.0, upgrades to the ETH+ yield product, and a decision to wind down incentive spending as the team moved into what he called a rapid exploration phase for new DTF, or Decentralized Token Folio, products.
Nevin Freeman’s Views and Positions
At Reserve’s Monetarium 2 conference in July 2025, Freeman framed the company’s goal in explicitly large terms during his closing keynote, comparing the effort to a “SpaceX-to-Mars” level mission to eliminate inflation through decentralized finance.
He traced that ambition back to Reserve’s early stablecoin experiment in Venezuela, walking the audience through how regulatory breakthroughs and tokenized securities could enable a global financial infrastructure built on the company’s DTF platform.
Speaking on the Milk Road Show in December 2025, Freeman argued that crypto’s integration into global finance has moved slower and messier than most investors expected, pointing to regulatory friction as the main obstacle rather than any gap in the technology itself. He framed the industry’s progress as a longer, more complicated build than most investors had priced in.
Nevin Freeman in the News
Reserve submitted a joint proposal to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force in March 2026, teaming with the Digital Dollar Initiative and the Tokenized Asset Coalition to pitch what the group calls the Global Access Protocol framework. Freeman disclosed the filing himself in a March 2026 update on X, where he also confirmed a pause on RSR token unlocks, part of a broader push to hold down costs while the team moves into new product development.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are quick answers to what people search most often about Freeman and Reserve Protocol.
What did Nevin Freeman do before founding Reserve Protocol?
Freeman co-founded RIABiz, a financial industry publication, in 2009 and served as its CTO until 2011. He then co-founded MetaMed Research, a personalized medical research company, followed by Paradigm Academy, a company-building and education venture, in January 2016.
Who co-founded Reserve Protocol with Nevin Freeman?
Freeman co-founded Reserve in 2017 with Matt Elder, who serves as the protocol’s chief technology officer. Elder previously worked as an engineer at Google and Quixey before joining Reserve to architect its technical systems.
What is Nevin Freeman’s role at Confusion Capital?
Freeman serves as president of Confusion Capital, one of two companies Reserve launched in January 2024 alongside ABC Labs. He holds this role in addition to remaining CEO of Reserve Protocol.
Is Nevin Freeman still CEO of Reserve Protocol in 2026?
Freeman confirmed his ongoing role as co-founder and CEO of Reserve in a March 2026 update posted to his official X account, where he detailed the protocol’s Index Protocol 5.0 rollout and other product development.
What is Reserve Protocol’s DTF platform?
DTFs, or Decentralized Token Folios, are on-chain baskets of assets similar to exchange-traded funds. Freeman has described the Reserve Index Protocol as an effort to let anyone create, own, and govern a DTF without relying on a centralized custodian.
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