John Haar

My Background

Born & raised outside New York City.

Second/Third generation American.

Majored in Finance at Villanova University outside Philadelphia.

Graduated in 2009 as the financial crisis was unfolding.

Began working on Wall Street after college at Goldman Sachs, where I stayed until joining Swan in early 2022.

In my nearly 13 years at Goldman Sachs, I was in the Asset Management division and held roles in institutional sales and fixed income portfolio management.

I was responsible for managing client portfolios ranging in size from $100 million to $40 billion dollars.

I’m currently living in New York City with my wife.

My Bitcoin Story

Although Bitcoin had not yet been released publicly, my Bitcoin story starts in 2008.

Being a finance major and senior in college in 2008-2009 was an interesting time to say the least. The Great Financial Crisis was unfolding before my eyes, and as I looked for a synopsis of what was happening, it quickly became clear that I could not rely on my teachers, the financial media, or Ben Bernanke. I vividly remember seeing Bernanke on TV make a statement about the financial system and be proven wrong just weeks later.

This led me to seek answers elsewhere, which thankfully brought me to The Mises Institute and the Austrian school of economics. My immediate reaction was firstly “wow this makes sense” and secondly “why was there no mention of this during my four years of college?”

I became a proponent of sound money and an avid reader of Mises.org.

Bitcoin was first mentioned to me by a friend in 2013 but I dismissed it, thinking that the vast majority of people weren’t even receptive to the idea of gold as money (despite gold’s long history as money) so why would they accept this magic new internet version of gold?

Thankfully in 2017 I began to see that Bitcoin possessed critical monetary properties which gold did not.