NVK

Rodolfo Novak, known universally as NVK, was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and became a Canadian by choice. With a background in product design and startup building, including co-founding Ripe Apps and holding product leadership roles at Method:CRM and Quandl, Novak brought a pragmatic, user-experience-driven approach to Bitcoin hardware that the space desperately needed.

In 2013, Novak co-founded Coinkite with Peter Gray. The company initially operated as a Bitcoin exchange platform, but regulatory challenges and DDoS attacks prompted a strategic pivot toward hardware products. That pivot turned out to be one of the most important decisions in Bitcoin hardware history. Coinkite became the parent company for Coldcard, OpenDime, and BlockClock, three products that have become synonymous with Bitcoin self-sovereignty.

Coldcard, co-founded in 2017 with Peter Gray, was born from Novak's personal frustration with existing hardware wallets. He wanted a secure, open-source cold wallet with a dedicated crypto security chip, and nothing on the market met his standards. So he built one. The Coldcard is a Bitcoin-only hardware wallet designed for air-gapped operation, meaning it can sign transactions without ever connecting to the internet. The firmware has always been open source, and in 2019, Coinkite released the full circuit diagrams and parts lists so that advanced users could build their own units and verify the hardware independently.

Beyond Coldcard, Novak created OpenDime, a 'Bitcoin stick' designed for physical Bitcoin transactions, and BlockClock, a real-time Bitcoin price display that has become iconic in Bitcoin offices and homes worldwide. He also launched bitcoinhackers.org as a Mastodon instance for the Bitcoin community and PaysBitcoin.org to track companies offering Bitcoin compensation. His design philosophy is simple: build devices that meet his own rigorous standards for financial sovereignty, even if it means saying no to features that don't serve security.