Eight Questions: Nyah Check, Member of Technical Staff, Security Engineering
Welcome to Eight Questions, where we profile individual members of the Anchorage Digital team, diving into their career paths, what brought them to crypto, and what makes them tick. Why eight? Because it’s the number of decimal places a bitcoin can be divided into. It’s also the last single digit number in a Fibonacci Sequence, and we like that.
Leslie Ankney
Next in our series, meet Nyah Check, who joined Anchorage Digital last year as a member of our technical staff focused on Security Engineering. Nyah brings over half a decade of security experience, most recently as the Founding Engineer at Altitude Networks. Today he works on infrastructure, application, and usability security at Anchorage. In his spare time, Nyah is passionate about making crypto and engineering more accessible and enjoys reading at least three books at any given time.
- The work you do at Anchorage is incredibly important to keeping our services running smoothly without disruption. Can you describe a typical day in your role?
On a typical day, we always have a security team meeting. Each of us have quarterly targets for our roadmap. Application and Infrastructure security are my main areas. Everyone on the security team is heavily focused on making sure every employee and customer is empowered with the tools and resources they need to be very productive, particularly within our current distributed remote work environment.
2. How did you get into cryptocurrencies and blockchain?
I’ve always been interested in security. I first heard of Bitcoin back at the University of Buea, in Cameroon. I actually interviewed with Anchorage early on in San Francisco, but at the time I was skeptical of crypto. I thought of digital assets like video game points and didn’t take them seriously.
I came to appreciate blockchain through the cryptography side, rather than the cryptocurrencies use case. A new paradigm for solving some engineering problems, not necessarily from the financial applications but looking at systems that can be built using blockchain technology is interesting to me. It’s a confluence of many interesting topics from: cryptographic proofs of trust, governance, and incentive structures, and digital identity. The currency part is just one aspect, and there’s so much more to come in the years ahead for blockchain adoption.
I also think cryptocurrencies have played a role in bringing security practices to the mainstream. More people now know what private keys are and have heard of cryptography than ever before because of crypto. The rise of crypto made people accept security as part of their day-to-day life, and today, security is seen by many as an enabler and not a blocker.
3. From living in Cameroon to moving to Silicon Valley, what are some of the big changes you faced? Tell us about your journey from growing up in Cameroon to becoming a cryptographer and security engineer today. How did you find your passion for engineering?
In Cameroon as in many African countries, medicine and law–traditional vocations essentially, are the “noble careers”. The types our parents would think of as acceptable. Computer Science wasn’t known or respected, but this is slowly starting to change as more Internet and mobile access increases across the continent.
Because of this, I was planning to be a medical doctor originally, and never would have thought I’d work with computers every day like I do now.
The first time I saw a computer was in Form one (the equivalent of sixth grade). I actually thought it was a new kind of TV. We were fortunate enough at my boarding school to have a computer lab where to play games we had to learn command line instructions on Windows 3.1. That first exposure really hooked me on computers. I decided I wanted to study Computer Science, inspired by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and wanted to move to Silicon Valley. In 2007, I watched the movie Die Hard 4 and saw how much you could do with programming from that movie. My parents were very unhappy with my newfound obsession. They thought I’d “ruined” my future, but I went forward anyway.
Sometimes you have to do something alone, without your family’s support because you know it’s worthwhile.
Even getting started was full of challenges. When I got an internship with Google, I had to borrow a computer from friends. I had to write code on paper because very often I didn’t have access to a computer at all but still needed to try and experiment with coding. It was very challenging to want to learn without the right tools. I joined IRC and started chatting with people around the world who were also programming, and this is where I formed my first community and network, literally with anonymous strangers thousands of miles away in Germany and the U.S. These were people I could reach out to and troubleshoot my coding experiences, and this was a huge part of building my skills and building a network for me.
I met the Founders of Docker and Diogo through this network, since he was the Head of Security there at the time, and later on, that’s how I learned about what he was doing with Anchorage.
4. What made you join Anchorage?
I was the first engineer at my last company and stayed through our Series A. I wanted to do something different, with cutting edge security work. I knew Diogo was working on an interesting security problem at Anchorage. I had been talking to many companies, but knew Anchorage was the best fit. I got to know a number of members of the team, through the interview process, and even met up with Nathan for coffee. Ultimately, it was the people and the interesting work that made my decision.
5. Earlier, you mentioned a lack of opportunities in your community growing up in Cameroon. What would be your advice to someone who wants to work in crypto or tech but doesn’t have a lot of resources or support where they are?
You have to believe in yourself and trust your instincts. Even if everyone around you doesn’t understand what you’re doing or believe in your “cause”. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone who was a computer programmer. The friends I met on IRC were my only resource and lifeline, essentially my open-source community that supported my growth as a programmer when literally no one around me did.
If you want to code, you just need to start. Practice. Get an internship, or contribute to an open source project, but always figure out how to solve problems. My advice boils down to: use the Internet to be resourceful and self-teach, believe in yourself, and network. I want to especially emphasize the importance of networking. Without my network, I wouldn’t have moved to San Francisco, so being able to write clearly and express myself was just as important as learning to code to open doors for my career.
6. Over the last year and a half at Anchorage, we’ve leaned into asynchronous work with a growing global team, and most of us are still working remotely. What are some of the challenges and benefits of working remotely for you personally?
It’s not so much of a challenge to me. As a programmer, my work is always completely solo, so being remote makes sense. Plus, I get a lot of advantages from working from home. Without a commute, I get two more hours of sleep, have breakfast, and can be more productive than in a crowded or noisy space. At the company level, remote work gives us the ability to hire talent from other parts of the country and the world which is also a great benefit for all of us to gain more perspectives from talent around the globe.
7. What kind of perspective do you bring to the Anchorage team?
I bring a very different perspective from growing up in a place where technology is not mainstream, and there’s a chronic lack of financial inclusion– living in that kind of environment and moving to a place where you have access to all those tools gives me a deeper sense of why blockchain and crypto are so powerful for Africa and other third-world countries; especially where currencies are unstable or there’s very little financial infrastructure.
I understand the power of a woman selling at the market in Buea, Cameroon, or of a refugee in a place where they need a cross-border payment just to survive. I personally understand the power of crypto to take people out of poverty. There’s tremendous potential for crypto adoption in the Third World, where there’s no Cash App, PayPal, or even bank accounts, and you can’t move money easily. I see the difference crypto can make and the power it can have.
8. You’re an avid reader, tell us about a few things you’re reading now?
The last book I read was Tough Love by Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor under President Obama, and former Ambassador to the United Nations. I was inspired by her story and experience as a Black woman who rose to a high position within the U.S. government and the prominent work she did in handling the Ebola crisis. I was living in Cameroon at the time, so to personally experience it and understand how the U.S. helped mitigate it with her at the helm was powerful. I also learned that her father was the person who set up Nigeria’s Central Bank(CBN) and that’s incredible. Right now, I’m reading Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopolous and a book about AI, how it can be leveraged for good and how to minimize the downsides: The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, by Eric Schmidt and Henry Kissinger, and a sci-fi novel, 2041: 10 Visions for Our Future, by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee.
Interested in learning more about what it’s like to work at Anchorage? Anchorage is hiring for a variety of roles, check our job opportunities here.
Disclaimer: Holdings of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are speculative and involve a substantial degree of risk, including the risk of complete loss. There can be no assurance that any cryptocurrency, token, coin, or other crypto asset will be viable, liquid, or solvent. Nothing in this communication is intended to imply that any asset held in custody by Anchorage is low-risk or risk-free. Digital assets held in custody are not guaranteed by Anchorage Digital Bank National Association and are not FDIC-insured.
