I'm Abhijay. I build things, write about ideas, and try to figure out how the world actually works.
I run a company called Cloaked — but this is my personal corner. I write about economics, privacy, power, and whatever I'm trying to work through at the time. Some of it's polished. Some of it isn't.
Written in 1997 but predicted the shift to digital identity and decentralized power better than almost anything published since. Some of it reads like prophecy. Some of it reads like cope. Worth separating the two.
Why Information Grows
César Hidalgo
Book
Best framework I've found for understanding how economies actually produce value. Changed how I think about networks.
The Curse of Bigness
Tim Wu
Book
This is one of those books that reframes something you thought you understood. Wu's argument is that antitrust isn't really about prices — it's about power. The original antitrust movement was a response to concentrated private power threatening democracy, not just an economic efficiency question. That framing matters a lot if you think about where tech is heading. If identity infrastructure consolidates the way payments did, the question won't be "are prices fair?" — it'll be "who controls the system?"
Meltdown
Chris Clearfield & András Tilcsik
Article
Good reminder that most system failures aren't caused by one big mistake. They're caused by tight coupling and small things compounding.
A bit about me, beyond the work.
I grew up between multiple cities — which probably explains why I think about systems and identity the way I do. I'm based in New York now.
Outside of work I'm usually reading (economics, history, whatever rabbit hole I'm in that week), cooking badly, or going on long walks where I talk myself through some problem I can't let go of. I watch too much Formula 1 and have strong opinions about coffee.
If you want to talk about any of the stuff I write about — or something completely different — I'm easy to reach.