# Shehzan Maredia

> Shehzan Maredia is the founder and CEO of Lava, a New York-based financial platform for bitcoin holders. His background includes Duke University, engineering at Google, data science at Shipt and the education venture CrucialLearning. He describes bitcoin as a savings technology and has expanded Lava from a wallet into borrowing, dollar balances, spending and services for business and wealth-management clients.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Lava
- **Organizations:** Lava, Google, Shipt, CrucialLearning, CleanHoover
- **Education:** Duke University, Hoover High School
- **Known for:** Founded Lava and led its expansion from a bitcoin wallet to lending, spending and business services., Built CrucialLearning; his Wellfound profile reports more than 5,000 users and acquisition by VitalSmarts in January 2020., Published and discussed a DLC-based bitcoin loan protocol with the Delving Bitcoin community.

## Career timeline

- **2017-2019** — Founded CleanHoover, according to his LinkedIn volunteer history.
- **2020** — Reports that CrucialLearning was acquired by VitalSmarts on January 24.
- **2021** — Worked as an engineer at Google before founding Lava.
- **2022** — Founded Lava; professional profiles give January as his start date.
- **2024-07** — Lava announced seed backing led by Caffeinated Capital and UTXO Capital.
- **2024-09** — Posted version two of the Lava Loans protocol paper to Delving Bitcoin.
- **2024-12** — Lava announced a $10 million Series A led by Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures.
- **2025-11** — Lava introduced its Bitcoin Line of Credit and announced $200 million in additional venture and debt funding.
- **2026-07** — Announced Lava Prime and Lava for Business.
- **2026-10** — Announced Lava Private for bitcoin wealth-management clients.

## Achievements

- Founded Lava and led its expansion from a bitcoin wallet to lending, spending and business services.
- Built CrucialLearning; his Wellfound profile reports more than 5,000 users and acquisition by VitalSmarts in January 2020.
- Published and discussed a DLC-based bitcoin loan protocol with the Delving Bitcoin community.
- Lava announced a $10 million Series A in December 2024 and a separate $200 million mix of venture and debt funding in November 2025.
- His LinkedIn profile reports more than 800 CleanHoover volunteers and 12,000 gallons of trash collected.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — October 19: introduced Lava Private, with segregated cold storage, credit, inheritance and trust planning for clients with seven-figure bitcoin holdings and above.
- **2026-09** — September 30: announced Lava Card merchant-reward expansion to Starlink and Discord alongside AI tools.
- **2026-07** — July 8: introduced Lava for Business; July 2: introduced Lava Prime for customized institutional and large-client borrowing.
- **2026-03** — March 9: a Pomp Podcast discussion recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York covered home purchases, borrowing, stablecoins and engineering.

## Links

- Website: https://www.lava.xyz/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shehzan-maredia314
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/MarediaShehzan
- GitHub: https://github.com/shehzanmaredia

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/shehzan-maredia
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-22