Arnaud Salomon
Founder and CEO of Mt Pelerin
Arnaud Salomon is the founder and CEO of Mt Pelerin. An EPFL engineer who spent the first part of his career trading commodities and currencies in Geneva, he discovered Bitcoin at the end of 2012 and has been working on the bridge between traditional finance and self-custodial crypto ever since. He has led Mt Pelerin since the company was incorporated in 2018.
At a glance
- Role: founder and CEO of Mt Pelerin Group SA
- Born: 1982, Swiss and French citizen
- Education: Master in Communication Systems, EPFL, 2008, with a specialization in IT security
- Before crypto: commodities then forex trader in Geneva, after a thesis internship at UBS Investment Bank in Zürich
- In crypto since: the end of 2012
- Based in: Switzerland, between the Mt Pelerin offices in Neuchâtel and Geneva
Growing up across borders
The story of Mt Pelerin begins with its founder, Arnaud Salomon, born in 1982. A Swiss and French citizen, Arnaud is above all a citizen of the world. Having grown up in countries as different as India and the Czech Republic, he developed an entrepreneurial spirit early on. At 16, he was already running his first business, building and selling computers in Prague.
A first-hand lesson in broken finance
Moving from one country to the other, Arnaud kept running into the problems of managing money and currencies across borders. At that time, using banks to transfer money between countries was excruciatingly slow and expensive. Having to endure those absurd and frustrating inefficiencies naturally gave him a vigorous motivation to defy them, and shaped the strong libertarian convictions he still holds today.
From EPFL to the trading floor
Arnaud finally settled in Lausanne, Switzerland, to study at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), where he obtained his Master in Communication Systems in 2008, with a specialization in IT security. After a thesis internship at UBS Investment Bank in Zürich, he began his career in Geneva as a trader, first in commodities, then in forex. Those years on the trading floor gave him an insider's view of how financial plumbing really works, and of how much of it was ripe for reinvention.
Discovering Bitcoin
At the end of 2012, he discovered Bitcoin and the world of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Quickly convinced by the vast potential this technology had to unleash innovation, he began to think about how it could be applied to the industry he knows best: finance.
Founding Mt Pelerin
The project that would later become Mt Pelerin was born in 2014, and was selected for the 2016 to 2017 batch of the Fintech Fusion startup accelerator program in Geneva. It was incorporated as Mt Pelerin Group SA on September 27, 2018, and marked the occasion by tokenizing 100% of its share equity on Ethereum, the world's first corporate shares issued as a token carrying full shareholder rights under Swiss law.
Under Arnaud's leadership, Mt Pelerin has grown into a Swiss financial intermediary affiliated with SO-FIT, a self-regulatory organization officially recognized by FINMA. The company runs offices in Neuchâtel and Geneva, and lets people buy, sell and swap cryptocurrencies straight from a wallet they control, through the Bridge Wallet mobile app, an OTC brokerage desk and a white-label on and off-ramp embedded in third-party projects.
In the media
Arnaud is a regular voice on Bitcoin, asset tokenization and the future of banking in Swiss and international media, from print interviews to television and podcasts. You will find a selection of his interviews on our press page, and our latest company announcements on our news page.
