Alexis Ohanian, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, revealed that he is an early investor in Ethereum and bought 50,000 ETH during the asset’s pre-sale in 2014.
His stash is now worth nearly $82 million.
Decentralization drove their investment decision
The 39-year-old entrepreneur and investor of Armenian heritage said the tragic history of his ancestors is one of the main reasons he likes the cryptocurrency industry.
In a recent interview For Forbes, he said some of his great-grandparents were beheaded by Turkish soldiers during the Armenian genocide in 1915. The Ottomans also confiscated his family’s heirloom rugs and other personal belongings.
As such, Ohanian has become a strong advocate for assets that centralized institutions cannot seize:
“Any group of people that has in their conscience, or in their collective history, some idea of persecution, especially by a state, makes the idea of a store of value that is not controlled by any particular state very attractive. And so, in a way, it was programmed into me at the time and it made me, in a way, receptive to the idea of a decentralized currency.”
Ohanian understood that a blockchain protocol called Ethereum was about to launch nearly a decade ago, and invested $15,000 in its native token: ETH. This means that he bought the cryptocurrency for approximately $0.30 per token.
His investment is now worth approximately $82 million, a staggering return of 546,000%. However, Ohanian wished he had bought more at the time:
“In retrospect, I didn’t invest as much as I should.”
He revealed in 2021 that it has “a lot” of Ethereum without giving more details.
His other crypto forays
In addition to co-creating Reddit, Ohanian has founded another entity: venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. He increase $500 million in early 2022 to invest in cryptocurrency startups and duplicate with another fundraiser of $177 million several months later.
Ohanian is also an advocate of non-fungible tokens. He bought an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection last summer and gifted it to his wife, tennis superstar Serena Williams.
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