According to reports Alexis Ohanian (one of the co-founders) of Reddit purchased 50,000 Ether coins (ETH), during the presale in 2014 for $15,000 which works out at a price of around 30 cents each coin.
Ohanian, who left the social media giant in 2020 stated in a Forbes interview that he found the concept for a decentralized value store to be very appealing partly due to his Armenian heritage. He decided to gamble early on. Ethereum. Ohanian resigned as CEO of social media company in 2020.
“Any group of people that have in their minds or collective history any idea of persecution, especially from a state makes the idea of an uncontrolled store of value very appealing.” [Citation needed] “Any group of people that have in their collective consciousness or history any idea of persecution, particularly by a government.” It was in my subconscious at that time. This made me more open to the idea of a decentralized currency.
CoinMarketCap says that this investment is now worth $82.5 Million at today’s rates. That’s a remarkable growth of 549.589% over its initial value.
He then described how Turkish forces had taken his ancestral carpets, which had been passed down from his family during the Armenian genocide of World War I. This is what attracted his interest to “unseizable” property.
Because Ohanian hates having his property taken, Ohanian is a strong advocate of self-custody. He does not trade his most valuable crypto assets on exchanges. This makes them more resistant to the prying eyes government officials. He manages these secret keys.
Ohanian explained that he saw the possibility for developers building a variety of unseizable assets on Ethereum after he heard it first during a meeting at Coinbase. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are an example of such assets.
This was the direct result of which he invested his first Ether investment. However, he later admitted in an interview that he didn’t invest as much as he should have.
Ohanian used the funds he earned from his early investments at Coinbase and Ether to start his venture capital company 776 in 2020. The company has financial stakes in 29 cryptocurrency-related firms, and in February 2022, it successfully secured $500 million to fund more investments of a similar kind.
The company believes that investors might take advantage of lower assets prices in a bear market and has therefore seen the latest market slump as an ideal time to make long-term investments in the cryptocurrency business.
Now, the company has assets in excess of 750 million dollars.
Ohanian noted that although cryptocurrencies can be unpredictable, there are still enough individuals who have the generational awareness to experience huge inflation. This makes cryptocurrency volatility much more bearable.
