Jeffrey Wernick
Entrepreneur and Bitcoin investor
Jeffrey Wernick, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate at the University of Chicago, majoring in economics and finance. Studied under various Nobel laureates including Friedrich A. von Hayek, Milton Friedman, George J. Stigler, Merton H. Miller, Ronald H. Coase, Gary S. Becker and Fischer Black. Successful entrepreneur and seasoned private investor in all asset classes. Early investor of bitcoin since 2009. Strong believer and outspoken advocate for bitcoin and blockchain and their social impact. Investor and development team leader in a couple of industrial tokenization projects. Advisor to a number of selected blockchain projects. Mr. Wernick has had a long and distinguished career managing money, including his own personal wealth, and is highly experienced in investing in distressed and bankrupt companies, precipitating changes in the operations of the enterprises and the restructuring of their balance sheets, as well as in other domestic and international investment opportunities, including angel investment, venture capital, real estate, currencies, commodities, mining, all forms of derivatives and structured financial products, sharing economy, lending platforms, biomedical, human genome project, payment systems, bitcoin and blockchain. Mr. Wernick also has been retained to handle many complicated negotiations and litigations involving complex transactions, and served on advisory boards of financial institutions specifically with respect to the management of non-performing loans, and personally handled all aspects of restructuring and recovery of collateral and collection of deficiency judgements, including dealing with regulatory authorities and governments.
Formerly, Mr. Wernick ran his own company, AVI Portfolio Services Company, Inc., which specialized in risk management, transaction consulting, credit insurance and market making in tailored, and exotic derivative products. At the age of 24, he sold AVI to the largest insurance company which also was a diversified financial interest. Previously, Mr. Wernick served as a Senior Financial Economist at the National Bank of Detroit, chairing the Risk Management Committee, the Loan Pricing Committee, the ALCO, the Credit Committee and Mortgage Finance. Mr. Wernick performed the earliest known private placements of structured securitization, including underlying assets of mortgages, credit card receivables, auto loans, commercial real estate, office buildings, and retail real estate. Prior to joining the National Bank of Detroit, Mr. Wernick performed quantitative research and traded the firm’s and partners’ capital at Salomon Brothers. Mr. Wernick also was an potions and futures trader on the CBOE, CBOT and the CME while a college student.
Mr. Wernick has been an invited speaker on many important international and regional-level forums and conferences, such as at the OCC, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, Davos Forum, and Boao Forum. He has also advised governments stressed by economic crises, for financial system architecture, legal reforms, pension reforms, tax policy and government finance.