Mircea Popescu

Mircea Popescu is a Romanian entrepreneur and author. He is the founder and operator of MPEx, a securities and futures exchange denominated in Bitcoin and is a co-owner of the Bitcoin betting site BitBet.us, the hardware security firm NoSuchlAbs and MiniGame, a computer game publisher. Popescu also covers cryptocurrency, tech and social topics on Trilema, his personal blog.

Background
Popescu grew up in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania and graduated from Avram Iancu University. He has lived in several countries including United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Egypt, where he co-authored the novel Asylum.

Career
Popescu founded Polimedia, a Romanian enterprise resource planning firm, in 2007.

He began writing Trilema in his native Romanian in late 2008. Popescu began writing about Bitcoin in early 2012 and switched to coverage in English later that year. He has since published prolifically on the topic, notably arguing for the inelasticity of the cryptocurrency amidst changes in supply and demand and describing what he sees as the future of contractual agreements based on cryptographic protocols. He is also outspoken about Bitcoin related scams ; Popescu suggested in April of 2013 that since-defunct exchange MtGox was headed for failure and expressed similar concerns about Labcoin in July 2013 before the scheme's closure.

MPEx, which Popescu started in April of 2012, attracted initial media attention  internationally following its listing of the bitcoin gambling site SatoshiDice, which sold in July of 2013 for a total of over 125,000 BTC.

Romanian Corruption Scandal
On July 13, 2009, the Romanian press reported that Mircea Popescu had filed a complaint with the country's special prosecutor for graft and administrative fraud on the grounds that the ex-president of the Romanian Academy had spent over $1mn in public funds on a project to scan and make publicly available the notes and other materials left by the poet Mihai Eminescu, which failed to produce any usable results. The matter was not prosecuted, but Eugen Simion withdrew from public life.

OpenBSD fundraiser
The exchange's sponsorship of the troubled operating system OpenBSD in January 2014    was largely seen as an unexpected rescue for the project, which Popescu said he admired for its “clamped down, security-minded approach”.

Berkshire vs. Bitcoin Bet
In March 2014 BitBet.us made headlines for a 1,000 BTC bet by Mircea Popescu speculating that Bitcoin would prove to be a better investment than Berkshire Hathaway's BRK-A shares in a year's time.

SEC request
The same month, Popescu revealed that he had received a request to disclose details of MPEx' users and at least one security issuer from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His candid responses to the commission's request exemplify Popescu's unconventional stance on regulatory authority and sparked widespread discussion  of Bitcoin's relation to traditional regulatory bodies.