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From failed SIM startup to first Ethereum marketer after an ayahuasca trip
Robbie Bent's international roaming SIM startup (raised ~$25M) collapsed when roaming went free. Depressed, he did ayahuasca in South America, met a crypto VC, put everything he had into Ethereum near $6, and became Ethereum's first non-technical marketing hire.
“And, you know, like a lot of these people we invest in, they're like, you know, great engineers, or they're just really into crypto, but they're not great at marketing. And so like, maybe you could just help out some of my portfolio companies, like if you got nothing else to do. Just come hang out with me and let's do this. And by the way, you should check out this thing called Ethereum. And so he's like, oh, Ethereum, what's that? They had just done its crowd sale. I think Ethereum was like at $6 at the time.”
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Telegram's ICO: held billions in float, then handed it back
Shaan recounts Telegram's TON ICO that raised ~$3-4B promising to beat Ethereum; the SEC killed it as an unregistered security, so Telegram returned the money after holding a multi-billion-dollar free float for years. Some middlemen who oversold their $20M allocations got burned.
“And so they just pulled the plug on the ICO. But for a year, they held everyone's money. Saying it's going to get listed at the end of the year or 2 years, maybe even. They held everyone's money. So they had like a free float of a multibillion-dollar float for multiple years, and then they gave back the money.”
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Vitalik: from $3.50-per-article Bitcoin blogger to youngest crypto billionaire
Shaan recounts how Vitalik Buterin started at 18 writing for Bitcoin Magazine at $3.50 an article, became known as a blogger touring crypto projects, then decided to build his own idea — Ethereum — becoming the world's youngest crypto billionaire.
“And Bitcoin Magazine paid him $3.50 per article. And he's like writing all about Bitcoin and all the cool things you're going to be able to do with cryptocurrencies. He's just like a kid.”
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How Druckenmiller flipped from Bitcoin skeptic to buyer: the 86% diamond hands
Druckenmiller long called crypto 'a solution in search of a problem,' but Fed money-printing during the CARES Act gave it a problem to solve. The clincher came from Paul Tudor Jones: when Bitcoin fell from $17,000 to $3,000, 86% of holders never sold, proving a base of religious-zealot holders behind a finite-supply asset.
“Then the second thing that happened is I got a call from Paul Jones, and he says to me, uh, do you know that when Bitcoin went from $17,000 to $3,000 86% of the people that owned it at $17,000 never sold it. Well, this was huge in my mind. Here's something with a finite supply, 86% of the owners are religious zealots. I mean, who the hell holds something through $17,000 to $3,000?”