In hardware veritas

In the eighth episode of What Bitcoiners don’t say, titled In hardware veritas, Luca Giuliani retraces the path that took him from the first computers he used as a child to robotics, biomedical research, a startup and finally the world of Bitcoin hardware wallets.

The story begins in Turin and the Piedmontese countryside, in a small town of around five thousand people. His father, an electrical technician with a repair workshop, emerges as a defining reference point. The family called him McGyver because he could fix virtually anything, from televisions and stereos to car emergencies resolved with improvised solutions.

“I saw him fix literally anything, electronic stuff and beyond.”

That repair culture remained with him, though with a generational difference. Giuliani explains that he still steps in when he can handle a fault on his own, but without his father’s same dedication. Technical work already absorbs much of his daily energy. Still, the mark of an upbringing based on understanding how things work before replacing them remains clear.

From floppy disks to programming

Giuliani’s teenage years were those of a nerdy boy fascinated by fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons and video games. The titles he remembers include Prince of Persia, LucasArts graphic adventures such as Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, as well as The Incredible Machine. In the latter, players had to assemble components to solve mechanical and logical puzzles: looking back, it was an experience that anticipated his engineering vocation.

His first contact with a computer dates back to primary school, with an 8086, DOS, floppy disks and a dot-matrix printer. At the technological science high school in Fossano, computer science soon became the subject for which he felt most naturally suited. The shift from simply knowing how to use tools to programming, in his third year of high school, was the turning point.

“When I discovered programming, it was a bolt from the blue.”

With QuickBasic, Giuliani discovered an aptitude he immediately recognised as distinctive. He does not describe himself as a model student; instead, he recalls being the classic boy who was “bright but doesn’t apply himself.” In computer science, however, he found a field in which effort seemed to fall almost to zero. That led him to choose Computer Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin.

Robotics, research and an accessibility device

During university, he joined a student research group focused on humanoid robotics. The environment, which he describes as a concentration of skills and experimentation, gave him freedom and practical opportunities. The group also worked with the RoboCup competition in mind, the international event in which teams of robots play football. The foundation’s stated goal is ambitious: by 2050, to field a team able to beat a world champion national side.

After graduating, Giuliani joined a consulting firm. His first project involved developing Luxottica’s new global B2B e-commerce platform. It was an abrupt entry into the world of web applications, far from his background in operating systems, robotics and low-level computing. The work allowed him to learn a great deal, but it also came with intense hours and what he describes as a toxic environment.

After two years, he chose a less remunerative path that better matched his aspirations: the Italian Institute of Technology. There, he worked in a team building electronic devices for researchers in robotics and biomedical engineering. His main project was a pair of smart glasses designed to filter sounds in real time according to their direction, helping people with hearing aids distinguish voices in noisy environments. A computer-vision component for visually impaired people was set aside because it was too complex for wearable hardware at the time.

The startup and the weight of its closure

The research project evolved into a spin-off. Giuliani became co-founder and CTO of a startup that raised more than two million euros through private investors, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, a call for proposals from the Municipality of Genoa and bank financing. The office opened in the first days of 2020, however, just as the pandemic arrived, severely slowing a company developing a hardware product and dependent on suppliers, materials and continuous iterations.

The team grew to six or seven people and built a product that began to attract market interest. Some expected investments, however, did not materialise. Liquidity problems became unsustainable and the startup was shut down. Giuliani recounts without rhetoric the difficulty of managing the closure, including responsibility towards employees and creditors.

“The first thing the other co-founder and I did was immediately stop paying ourselves a salary and try to keep as much liquidity in the company as possible.”

Despite the outcome, his personal assessment remains positive: an intense, formative experience that confirmed the technological vision developed over the preceding years.

Arriving at BitBox and the Bitcoin world

After spending several months closing the company, Giuliani reactivated his network of contacts. A former colleague from the university group, already employed by BitBox, told him the company was looking for people. Bitcoin was not the initial reason for his application. Giuliani had heard about it at university and found the technology interesting, but had not explored its economic or financial dimension.

Hardware was what convinced him. After around ten years spent between robotics, electronics and physical devices, he did not want to return to a job consisting exclusively of software development.

“I had spent 10 years with hardware in my hands, and I knew I would miss no longer having a piece of electronics in my hands.”

The interview with BitBox opened a new phase. Giuliani joined while openly stating that he did not know Bitcoin in depth and was out of date with professional software development. The first months were a continuous crash course, with notes taken even during coffee breaks. That immersion also led to the discovery of Bitcoin’s economic dimension, which had remained at the margins of his path until then.