Currently, the early birds are feasting on much fatter worms than the late investors. The early birds are those who got involved earlier than the rest by either accumulating, investing in Bitcoin projects, mining, etc. Crypto believers still say that it's not too late to jump on the wave. More crypto billionaires will be made and the current set can only go higher. Maybe soon enough we'll be looking at the crypto trillionaires.
Current stats show that crypto holders in major contributing countries are not up to half of the total population, and we all know how the price of crypto is driven. Since more people are yet to adopt Bitcoin, it means that the worth could be 3x its current value by the time up to half of the population adopts it or by the next halving event.
As the saying goes, the next best time to buy is NOW.
As we go on in this article, we will be looking at the lives of some of the best-performing bitcoin investors in no particular order. In brief detail, we will have an overview of how they came about amassing a huge fortune on the crypto market.
1. Barry Silbert
Barry Silbert is one of the earliest investors in Bitcoin, with the Birth of Digital currency group and Grayscale Investment as early as 2013. He set his crypto empire a mile ahead of many others and earned himself a tag as the King of Crypto. The Digital currency group was founded to generate seed funding for Bitcoin and blockchain-themed companies.
Not so long ago, the company purchased Coindesk, one of the top crypto news sources, and Luno, a popular crypto wallet for which the group helped raise a seed funding, about six years ago. Besides the two mentioned, the company has made different types of investments in over 100 crypto-related companies including the trading platform Genesis, Coinbase, and the Bitcoin investment fund, Grayscale which launched in 2013 and has since been expanding. One of the early investors in Ripple, Silbert has amassed himself a good foundation and created a name in foreseeing and making profitable crypto investments.
Prior to this newfound fortune in crypto, Barry had been working as an investment banker at Houlihan Lokey and was CEO at Registered Stock Partners, after graduating with a degree as a Bachelor of Arts. He has also been awarded the title of “Entrepreneur of the year” and has been featured on fortune’s list of 40 under 40.
Through the years, Barry has been persistent in riding the crypto trends and all of that has been paying off. In December 2020, Grayscale brought back its campaign advert on Television channels across the U.S, telling investors to buy crypto and “drop gold”. The ad was first aired in May 2019 when BTC was a little above $5,000. Obviously, anyone who didn’t listen lost out big time.
After the Fourth Bitcoin halving took place, back in August 2020, the Digital Currency group under Barry Silbert told the public that it would expand its reach into crypto mining through Foundry, a subsidiary company. This subsidiary firm will have a wide range of mining offers, including supplying the mining equipment, financing, and also help services. Barely a month later, in September, they bought Luno, a popular crypto exchange platform for which they had previously raised seed funding.
In 2021, the Grayscale trading platform revealed to the public that they had acquired thrice the total amount of BTC mined in the last month of 2020. This big reveal left the company with about $20 billion in assets. Before the announcement, Barry had resigned as the CEO and was succeeded by Michael Sonnenshein, a long-standing managing director at Grayscale. He took the action so that he can easily dispose of his responsibilities properly, at the Digital Currency Group.
Through DCG, Barry Silbert has created, invested in some projects, and bought companies as subsidiaries. These projects span a broad range, from Security themed, Networking, Identification, gaming, media, crypto exchange, trading as well as mining.
2. The Winklevoss Twins (Tyler and Cameron)
After gaining a fair share of popularity with the Facebook lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, they took the millions of dollars earned in settlement and started a venture capital firm in 2012. Winklevoss Capital was created with the aim of investing in early startups and becoming part of the next big thing.
They made the first major step towards this by investing in Bitcoin for the long term, and eventually founding a crypto exchange in 2014. When the first price surge happened, they became among the few crypto believers turned billionaires. According to a current statement, they claim to own up to 1% of the total BTC in circulation.
Their early involvement and belief gave them the foresight to launch Gemini, the very first certified and regulated crypto exchange which has since stretched its reach into the U.K after getting their e-money license application approved. The word Gemini is Latin for “twins”.
Cameron Winklevoss holds the position of President, while his twin brother Tyler is the CEO. Their exchange eventually became a licensed platform to offer ETH and ZEC (Zcash). As the very first exchange, they also enjoyed the privilege of being the first to offer Bitcoin futures contracts. The largest options exchanges in the U.S (Chicago) have been using the Gemini platform’s Bitcoin Market data for their BTC trading products. They kept the pace steady, and in 2018 they got featured on the Forbes list of “The Richest People in Cryptocurrency'', the maiden edition.
In May 2020, Gemini partnered with Samsung in a deal that saw the two firms work hand in hand by allowing Samsung users to link their Samsung inbuilt blockchain wallet to their Gemini accounts for easy cross-transaction and management of crypto holdings in both wallets through a smart device. In July of the same year, they also struck a partnership deal with Brave browser, a browser app with great privacy and ad-blocking features.
The Brave browser launched their token called BAT (Basic Attention Token), which registered users can either buy or earn by watching paid, secured adverts on the browser. With the Gemini partnership, Brave was able to integrate an in-browser wallet for users to store their tokens and spend how they choose to, either outside or within the app.
Under the directive of the two brothers, the Gemini platform listed up to 15 (Defi) tokens, including Filecoin, back in September 2020. By October, they landed another partnership deal with Taxbit, a startup aimed at facilitating crypto tax reports. The deal was meant to integrate a more personalized experience for Gemini users, on the app.
Early in 2021, their company landed another project partnership that let them integrate the Singapore dollar on the platform, and open their doors wider to the world. The payment processor, PayPal also announced their partnership with Taxbit, which only helped push up the overall value.
Ever since there have been talks and speculations about whether the company will soon be going public with an IPO (Initial Public Offering), or by some other means. For now, they are merely speculations, but very strong speculations regardless. If they go public, they will be one of the first major crypto companies to make this move and it is most likely to have a positive effect on the company and a ripple effect on subsidiaries and partners.
The exchange has also revealed that it will soon be launching a reward credit card that will let users receive reward points as BTC and other popular tokens. The card is called the Gemini Credit Card. At the same time they also announced their full purchase of the company Blockrize, which was created by veteran developers and offered the same unique service of crypto credit rewards, but probably needed support and major publicity.
Like Barry Silbert, they have always been public about their opinions that cash is trash and investors should drop gold and buy crypto.
Before they started their crypto adventure, these two also got their MBA Degrees from the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, and also studied at Harvard University where they met and got involved with Mark Zuckerberg. They also had great careers as rowers and even performed for the U.S at Olympic Games hosted by Beijing in 2008 where they came in 6th position.
3. Dan Morehead
In July 2013, Dan Moorehead, a graduate of Civil Engineering at Princeton University, founded Pantera Capital and is also known for his shareholdings at Bitstamp and other numerous Investments. His breakout company, Pantera Capital, is a California-based venture capital company that focuses exclusively on funding crypto assets and blockchain-related projects.
The firm started as a macro hedge fund back in 2003, and in 2013 after a complete rebranding, the company decided to lay old roots on the new foundations of Crypto and Blockchain. At the time, this was the first of its kind and this investment has paid off such good dividends in return.
Pantera capital would eventually go on to become one of the top companies with the largest crypto holding by the end of 2018 and has currently gained over 24,000% in generated profit for shareholders since it launched.
On average, they invest in projects having an estimated worth of $500 million and upwards to a billion U.S Dollars, and participate in crowd fundings of $10 to $50 million.
The company makes investments in a wide range of crypto and blockchain-themed projects including; Thundercore, Oasis Labs, Circle, FunFair, Bakkt, Amber group, etc.
Morehead is also a strong believer in Defi tokens and has recently made his interests in Defi investment known. In his own words, “Bitcoin will go far...Defi will go farther”.
With an experienced skill-set spanning 25 years, and holding several positions within that time including; financial adviser, investment funds manager, and officiating positions at top banks and firms, Morehead has been able to drive his company and partnering projects into making a lot of profit and reaching new business heights.
The bull market early in 2021 didn’t elude them either, even though Morehead had already spoken of shifting focus to the Defi sector, which he believes will overshadow Bitcoin 100x within the next 3 to 5 years. Nevertheless, he still believes Bitcoin is not even halfway done. Currently, they are already buying into various tokens including 0x coin, Ampleforth, etc.
4. Michael Novogratz
Michael Novogratz is considered one of the new crypto billionaires to make the Forbes list. But in reality, he was featured on the magazine’s “Billionaire section” back in 2007 before the financial unrest that rocked between 2007-’08 and affected his net worth too. Currently, he claims to have put as much as 30% of his total assets in crypto. He has been a strong believer since 2015.
Before he struck gold making crypto investments, Novogratz was an investment fund manager and president of the Fortress Investment Group. Before this, he had set out in his professional career working at Goldman Sachs as a money-market salesman before getting promoted and transferred to officiate at the Asian branches in Tokyo and Hong Kong between 1992 and 1999.
Throughout his 11-years stay at Goldman Sachs, Novogratz occupied various positions including becoming the President of Goldman Sachs in Latin America.
After leaving Goldman, Michael Novogratz became part of the Fortress Group as CIO in 2002, along with a small set of keen investors that joined in making the company public later in 2007. Within this time, his ranks within the firm rose to President level, before getting an appointment as a director at Hudson River Park’s Trust, by David Paterson, the governor of New York at the time.
He has since become a member of the committee for investment advisory at New York’s Federal Reserve Bank, the Acumen Fund board, as well as PAX, and a handful of others. He also Founded an NGO that creates awareness in sports, in public schools, through wrestling called Beat the streets, and the music school, School of Strings.
In 2015, he stepped down from his position at Fortress Group and liquidated his share-holdings in the company. In 2016 he founded the Galaxy Investment Partners and Galaxy Digital, under which he invested in a wide range of sectors as CEO, most especially crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum that were making the waves.
His early adoption is eventually paying off well, although he held off from pursuing his crypto hedge funding plans until after the first bull market because he didn’t like the initial “conditions”. Amidst this, he still made some investment and reportedly made over $250 million.
In 2018 and beyond, Novogratz saw himself making a decent amount of crypto profit that landed him back in Forbes’ spotlight. By the end of the first quarter of 2020, the company reported a loss of over $230 million since birth, and also revealed that it held 13,338 BTC, worth $112 million at the time due to a long price dip, but currently valued at $769 million. Through the last month of 2020, and early in 2021, the price history of BTC has been in favor of Michael Novogratz and others like him who seized the future early in the past.
5. Andre Cronje
Andre Cronje is the independent Defi developer responsible for creating Yearn.finance (YFI), one of the fastest-growing Defi protocols on the Ethereum Blockchain. After graduating from Stellenbosch University with a degree in Law, Cronje was practicing but was drawn to the computer science field by happenstance. He eventually enrolled and took classes where he was perceived to be a natural.
Within a few years, he was given his degree and retained as a lecturer by the institution. Although he had always been more advanced in age than the much younger developers that populate the crowd of crypto developers, Cronje always had a natural talent in tech building and this was highlighted on his Yearn.finance project.
Over the next few years, Cronje worked in a wide range of tech companies, and in 2016 while working at a fintech company, he had some time to eat up some Whitepapers and documents on blockchain technology. He had previously heard all about it but was very skeptical about making investments because he wasn’t ready to deal with the rapid fluctuations, instead he invested in some stablecoins. While his project partner was away on a honeymoon vacation Cronje started working on the project after he grew very interested in the blockchain technology behind crypto. This wasn’t his first brush with crypto as he had previously landed a position as Partner at Crypto Briefing and a technical adviser at the Fantom Foundation.
In 2020, Cronje gained massive popularity after creating Yearn.finance, the very first yield vault project. The protocol allows users to lock their digital assets in contracts and earn YFI incentives using the Yearn.finance platform. This concept is not unique as it mimics yield farming activities, but having a unique protocol that also offers incentives.
Following an event hosted in July called the “Fair lunch”, the entire tokens in-store were distributed to the public and none was reserved for the “team”. Although he openly regrets this action, it has since brought him a massive following and even comparisons with Satoshi Nakamoto, the supposed creator of Bitcoin.
Within the first month after launching, Cronje’s yearn.finance attracted about $800 million in assets invested. In no time the price shot past the $40,000 mark and has since stayed within range.
In November 2020, the company thrilled users with announcements on different partnerships and investments they should expect over the years. This period of expansion gave YFI the much-needed insurance as one of the leading Defi projects among the pack. Yearn.finance also stands out with unique products for its users.
Amidst all of this, Cronje has continued to publicly take a less central position on the Yearn.finance project and has even been rumored to “want to take a break from Defi” because he believes the ecosystem is still at its initial phase and having too many irrelevant players on the scene. He likened the present situation to that of ICOs in 2017 when there was an overflow of irrelevant coins.
From his public actions and in the opinion of most people, Andre is in the business for the love of it, and not just monetary profit. He also confirmed this by saying in a Cointelegraph interview that “when it stops being fun”, he’ll leave. Nonetheless, he unwittingly continues to play a lead role and announce project events through his blog and social media.
Conclusion
These investors, like many others, have made a good fortune creating, trading, and investing in blockchain and bitcoin-themed projects. Some have inspired each other, while some of them will become an inspiration for the upcoming generation still exploring the lengths of blockchain technology. The Blockchain ecosystem including Bitcoin, Defi, and NFTs is still in the early stages, and with time we are expected to see more growth and useful adoptions.
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