Crypto connected real estate man revolving-doored in & out of the Shapiro admin and into data center consultancy.
Dodgy looking conflict of interest crypto & AI stuff in Pennsylvania.
In September 2025, Brian Regli was described by an article in Triblive as a consultant for Allegheny DC Property Co., the land developer behind a proposed data center in Springdale Pennsylvania, a town just outside of Pittsburgh, where a coal fired power plant used to operate.
When I put Brian Regli’s name into Google on October 1st, the first result was his Linkedin, and the link did go to Brian Regli’s Linkedin page, but the google result described the Linkedin blurb as reading: “Civil rights and social action disability advocacy – helping to improve workplace and educational opportunities for individuals from the disability community.” But when I clicked through Brian Regli’s Linkedin bio page blurb said: “Entrepreneur and hands-on manager, with experience in real estate, software, telecommunications, higher education, government contracting, and public affairs.Entrepreneur and hands-on manager, with experience in real estate, software, telecommunications, higher education, government contracting, and public affairs.” I don’t know if this is a Google error, perhaps caused by AI automation, or if the Google preview was an outdated previous version of Brian Regli’s profile. There is a mention on the Linkedin profile of volunteering with The Arc of Philadelphia from 2014 to 2018.
Brian Regli’s Linkedin lists experience as having worked at Revere Suburban Realty for 24 years with a year and a half of that as the president. Then Brian Regli reports on Linkedin that he was named by Governor Josh Shapiro in January 2023 to chair of PENNVEST which is the PA Infrastructure Investment Authority, from January 2023 to April 2025 and was in the Shapiro administration in the role of “Executive Director, Critical Investments” to “oversee Pennsylvania’s implementation of more than $21 billion in federal funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.” And Brian Regli’s listed consultancy (called “Mad Hat Ventures”) is listed as May 2025 to present.
Before and during Brian Regli’s serving in Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration, Brian Regli was reportedly the director of Asset Entities Inc. from February 2023 to May 2024, according to The Asset Entities Inc.(Stock ticker: ASST) 10-K form for 2024. Asset Entities Inc. SEC IPO form S-1 reported Michael Gaubert as the Executive Chairman. Michael Gaubert is an attorney and, according to SEC forms, the cousin of Brian Regli. Asset Entities Inc. merged with and is now known as Strive Inc. a bitcoin company that was co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, who stepped down as Executive Chairman to run for president in 2023. Strive’s website describes that it was founded in 2022 supposedly in response to “large financial institutions” advancing “social, cultural, and political agendas in corporate America’s boardrooms”. Yahoo Finance calls Strive an investment management company, and the Strive Inc. Linkedin page blurb describes it this way: “Focused on maximizing returns through capitalism, meritocracy, innovation, American exceptionalism, and Bitcoin.”
In the Asset Entities Inc. 10-k form for 2022 and the 10-k form for 2023, the narrative on business background actually cited the Gamestop meme stock debacle cult as the example for their business plans, referring to it as a phenomenon. Patrick Boyle has a video summarizing the late 2021 SEC report on meme stocks (Gamestop), (“Staff Report on Equity and Options Market Structure Conditions in Early 2021”), and how the SEC proposes that their analysis on how Gamestop stocks got so far afield from reality raises questions about market efficiency of short-selling, and Patrick Boyle also explains why what happened wasn’t exactly as people thought at the time. Dan Olson, a Canadian documentarian when talking to Robert Evans on It Could Happen Here podcast about the gamestop debacle said in October 2023 that it was like “if 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal”, and there’s a 2024 documentary about the cult-like experiences of some people who were pulled into this financial whirlwind that, from the descriptions, sounded like a cross between some sort of bizarre gambling version of an MLM and a deranged level gaming forum flame war. And this is what the Strive Inc. 10-K form said the company had looked to seemingly as an enticing business model.
The report says the business went about making what they called “education and entertainment” Discord server “communities” called, for example, “STOCKS” and “CRYPTO” and “NFTS” and “REALTY” and the narrative brags about having big reach with influencers in these “communities” across platforms like Tiktok and “other social media” platforms… because of these Discord “communities”. In the 10-K form, the narrative goes on to describe “Current Business” as “Discord investment education and entertainment service” that is “designed primarily by and for enthusiastic Generation Z, or Gen Z, retail investors, creators and influencers.” But while they say that Gen Z is their primary market they expect to reach and appeal to older generations also, citing specifically the topic of real estate investments.
A notice dated September 22, 2025, reported that Strive would merge with Semler Scientific to combine the company’s ownership of 10,900 in Bitcoin. September 25, 2025, The U.S. DOJ issued a press release titled: “Semler Scientific Inc. and Bard Peripheral Vascular Inc. to Pay Nearly $37M to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations Relating to FloChec and QuantaFlo Devices” which says that there was violations “by knowingly causing, and conspiring to cause, the submission of false claims to Medicare”. Prior to this in June STAT reported that Semler Scientific had gone from being a medical device company to a “bitcoin first company” and the 4th largest bitcoin holding in the U.S.
This isn’t the first cryptocurrency connection to the PA Governor Josh Shapiro administration. A few months ago the PA DEP under Shapiro greenlit tire burning at the data center cryptocurrency plant owned and operated by Trump’s Loans Program director at the US Department of Energy. Josh Shapiro’s “RESET” agenda also prioritizes fossil fuel, since the R in RESET stands for “reliable” which specifically is used by fossil fuel promoters who claim renewable energy sources are “unreliable”. (Apparently people have believed wrongly it stood for “Renewables” but it does not.) And then the Pennsylvania Governor actually attended the Trump rally in Pittsburgh in July 2025, where Trump erroneously claimed the Unabomber was a student of his uncle at MIT, and was still complaining about Joe Biden. Republican Senator Dave Mccormick arranged this event and the press reported Democratic Governor Shapiro was showing a “united front” with Dave Mccormick, who also is apparently pally with Democratic Senator John Fetterman too since Tim Miller at The Bulwark had said he saw them together at Salena Zito’s book party back in spring 2025, after she’d had an op-ed published in WaPo in February 2025 about interviewing them together at John Fetterman’s house. Access journalism often seem to be involved in the dubious stories of Pennsylvania state politics.