The founder of the social media website Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, reportedly bought 50,000 Ether (ETH) for just $15,000 during the cryptocurrency presale in 2014, costing only 30 cents per coin.
Ohanian, who left the social media giant in 2020, told Forbes in a February 21 article that he found the idea of a decentralized store of value very attractive because of his Armenian heritage, which led him to gamble on Ethereum. .
“Any group of people who have a consciousness, or in their collective history, some idea of persecution, especially by the state, makes the idea of saving values that are not controlled by a single state very interesting. So, in some ways, I have it hardwired in me, and makes me accept the idea of a decentralized currency.
At current prices, this investment is worth a whopping $82.5 million according to CoinMarketCap, representing an increase of 549,589%.
He goes on to describe how his family’s heirloom carpets were confiscated by the Turkish army during the Armenian genocide in World War 1, which led to his interest in “inalienable property”.
Because of his aversion to property that can be seized, Ohanian is a big supporter of custody and managing private keys for some of the most valuable crypto-related investments to ensure that no exchange is more vulnerable to government hands.
When he heard about Ethereum in a meeting with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, Ohanian claimed to see the potential for developers to build a wide range of potentially unseizable assets such as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on top of it.
As a result, he made an initial investment in Ether but noted in an interview that “in hindsight, I didn’t invest nearly as much as I should have.”
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Ohanian founded the venture capitalist company 776 in 2020 using the results of the initial investment in Ether and Coinbase, which has invested in 29 crypto-related startups and raised $ 500 million in February 2022 to finance the same investment.
In line with Ohanian’s opinion that the market offers an opportunity to buy assets at a discounted price, the company considers the latest market decline as an ideal time to make long-term bets on the crypto industry.
The company currently has more than $750 million in assets under management.
Ohanian noted that although crypto is extremely volatile, “there are many people who have the generational awareness to see massive inflation,” which makes crypto volatility more palatable for these people.