Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and founder of venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, endorsed Ethereum on CNBC’s Squawk Box segment on June 10.
This comes one year after Reddit introduced Ethereum-based tokens on their social media site. Though Ohanian is no longer on their board of directors, having resigned his seat a year ago, the “Mayor of the Internet” and his former company are on the same page regarding the popular blockchain.
“That’s where a lot of my holdings are, candidly.” He did not offer an exact figure of how much of his personal $40 million fortune is tied up in the cryptocurrency, but the Canadian millennial millionaire is not known for small bets. As a former partner at venture capital fund Initialized Capital and startup accelerator Y Combinator, he has never been shy about putting his money where his mouth is.
His big hopes for Ethereum center around the many applications developed for the platform. While Bitcoin’s market capitalization currently towers over that of all others combined, the runner-up in the race has distinguished itself with decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — the latter which has seen a mainstream boom in the past few months for its uses in transferring art ownership.
Ohanian’s wife Serena Williams is also excited about the crypto space. Her estimated net worth of $225 million, mostly accrued off the tennis court, has gone toward investments in crypto firms like Bitcoin rewards company Lolli, NFT marketplace Bitski, and perhaps most notably Coinbase — the very same cryptocurrency exchange platform that her husband’s former company Y Combinator had incubated years prior.
In the same interview, Ohanian expressed his support for those who trade so-called “meme stocks“. He noted that momentum trading is not new, and that retail investors have simply gained faster access to information thanks to low-barrier participation on the Internet. “We absolutely need more financial literacy,” he said, “but the thing we have to keep in mind is, this is here to stay.”
For those paying attention to cryptocurrency investing, is Ohanian adding .eth to his Twitter handle a signal for the Flippening? You decide.
