Page 74 - Forbes - USA (February 2018)

F I N T E C H
CR YPT O BILLIONAIRES

believers, he started the Toron- In the 2000s Pierce, an avid gamer, in 2015 to focus on the space. reached as high as $10.9 billion
to Bitcoin Meetup group—and at built one of the largest virtual-as- Given his background, Nova- last year and recently sat at $8.8

the first event he met Ethereum’s set trading companies, Internet gratz approached crypto as a billion, with Blumer owning an
founding genius, the Russian- Gaming Entertainment, which trader. estimated 15% of block.one.

Canadian coder Vitalik Buterin. employed thousands of people in “The guys who have done An Iowa native, Blumer start-
With a few hundred thou- China to play videogames, like the best are the true believ- ed his journey into virtual assets
sand from his prior enterprises, World of Warcraft, in order to win ers who don’t have the specula- at the age of 14, selling avatars,

Di Iorio helped fund Ethereum’s coveted virtual prizes—which he tive DNA,” says Novogratz. “If I magic weapons and houses in
coding—and the legal counsel it then sold to millions of videogam- had literally not sold my Ethere- online game titles such as Ever-
hired—before the coin was taken ers globally for real money. Video- um when it was at $15, I proba- quest and World of Warcraft .

public. Calling himself an “ag- game currency arbitrage led him bly would have made—I can’t tell His company, Gamecliff, was ac-
nostic” when it comes to the var- to crypto in its earliest days. you how much because it would quired by Brock Pierce’s Internet
ious blockchains, he has since in- Pierce became captivated make me sick.” (Ethereum re- Gaming Entertainment (IGE) in
vested in a variety of crypto-as- by Bitcoin’s potential and quit cently changed hands for more 2005. Blumer, fresh out of high
sets, including Qtum, Vechain to help found and fund dozens than $1,000.) “You would kill school, relocated to its Hong
and Zcash. “I like being part of of crypto companies, including yourself if you think that way,” he Kong headquarters to run op-

different sectors of the block- Mastercoin, Blockchain Capital, adds. Novogratz hasn’t been shy erations. Next, in 2007, Blumer
chain realm.” His investment Coinbase, Ethereum, Tether, Bit- about terming the current envi- went on to found Accounts.net,
strategy has been to get in early fury and now Block.one. ronment a bubble—his goal is to which sold in-game avatars and

and, after the asset grows and Lawsuits have plagued him make as much money as possible reached more than $1 million a

levels off, pour his gains into an- over the years. One of his early before it pops. month in revenues. In 2010 he
other new promising coin. business partners was convicted Right now that means rolling launched Okay.com, an enter-

He’s proud to have helped as a sex offender, and Pierce was part of his digital currency win- prise data-sharing platform for
build Ethereum, now worth over himself named in a civil lawsuit nings into his latest play, Galaxy real estate brokers in Asia.
$100 billion. “Now I go into a for involvement in sexual mis- Digital, a merchant bank devot- In 2016, Blumer met Dan
bank, and they’re like, ‘Oh my conduct, but the suit was later ed to crypto that he is working to Larimer (see below), and the
God, you started Ethereum,’ dismissed and Pierce denies any list publicly in Canada. duo started working on block
whereas before they’d say, ‘We wrongdoing. .one. Later Pierce got involved in
can’t give you a bank account.’ Pierce now says he will do- EOS. In order to avoid regulato-
Now they come to me.” nate $1 billion into a decentral- ry oversight, EOS’ coin sale was
ized autonomous community not open to people in the U.S. or
run on a blockchain. Governed China.
by a constitution, the communi- Brendan
ty will be registered as a charita-
ble organization, he says, whose Blumer
Brock Pierce participants will receive voting
rights to allocate its money. It is CEO, BLOCK.ONE, 31
BUILDER
CHAIRMAN, BITCOIN set to launch June 1, based on a Dan Larimer
FOUNDATION; new blockchain called EOS.IO Crypto Net Worth:
ADVISOR, BLOCK.ONE, 37 $600 million–$700 million
IDEALIST BUILDER that Pierce helped launch. “I’ll CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER,
make more money,” he shrugs. BLOCK.ONE, 35
BUILDER
Crypto Net Worth: “I’m not worried about it.” Operating from Hong Kong,
$700 million–$1 billion Blumer’s block.one developed Crypto Net Worth:
EOS.IO, a blockchain platform $600 million–$700 million
Originally from Minnesota, challenging Ethereum. Blum-
Pierce now offi cially resides in er claims it will scale transaction Computer programmer Dan Lar-
Puerto Rico, taking advantage of speed, eliminate user fees and imer used to be a cog in Ameri-
a tax-code exemption that shields empower open-source commu- ca’s military-industrial complex,
the island’s residents from in- Michael nities. “If the internet was mass, working on defense projects,
come tax. But he spends a lot of Novogratz scalable, insecure data transfer,” drones and unmanned vehicles
time around Los Angeles; when says Blumer, “then the block- for companies like Raytheon and
Forbes caught up with him, he’d chain represents mass, secure Torc Robotics. But in 2007, the
CEO, GALAXY DIGITAL, 53
just hosted a swanky all-night ESTABLISHMENT data transfer and everything that Virginia Tech graduate says, he
dinner party for nearly 30 guests, comes with it.” had an existential crisis.
Crypto Net Worth:
with a chef from a Michelin- $700 million–$1 billion The market is lapping up “Philosophically, I wanted to

starred restaurant, fire spinners, a Blumer’s rhetoric. At more than move from working on weapons

snake dancer and a hookah. A well-known macro hedge fund $1 billion raised so far, EOS of destruction to creating sys-
Pierce discovered crypto via manager, Novogratz, who hit the has become the world’s biggest tems that could help provide life,

entertainment. The former child Forbes billionaires list in 2007 token sale, even though the plat- liberty and property for man-
actor cofounded a precursor to before the ensuing economic form won’t launch until June, kind,” says Larimer.
YouTube, at 17, called Digital En- meltdown, seems to have pulled and it’s unclear whether the coin In 2013 Larimer started Bit-
tertainment Network, which off a nifty comeback. He began will benefit from it. And it’s got- Shares, a crypto-exchange man-

raised $88 million during the dot- investing in crypto in 2013 and ten more euphoric from there— aged by a community instead
com bubble and then went bust. left Fortress Investment Group the EOS coin’s total market value of a single authority. In 2016

72 | FORBES FEBRUARY 28, 2018