The co-founder of the Reddit platform, one of the leading venues for exchanging information and news about the crypto world, apparently made a good bet on Ether. In fact, from early on Alexis Ohanian bet on ETH, now the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization.
Specifically, in 2014, Alexis Ohanian bought 50,000 ETH at a price of $0.30. The entrepreneur realized a 500,000% return on his investment. Below are the details.
The views of the Reddit co-founder on Ether and the crypto world
In 2014, the American entrepreneur reportedly bought 50,000 Ether at a price of $0.30 for a total of $15,000 during the ICO (Initial Coin Offering ) of this cryptocurrency.
The Ethereum blockchain, on which the Ether cryptocurrency circulates, was established the following year. Thus, by owning all of his Ether today, his investment is worth about $81 million at the current Ether price.
Therefore, the entrepreneur has realized a 500,000% return on this investment. Most notably, Ohanian recently told Forbes:
“In retrospect, I haven’t invested as much as I should have.”
The 39-year-old entrepreneur became interested early in decentralizing the crypto ecosystem because of his Armenian origins and what his family suffered during the 1915 genocide. Stating the following:
“Any group of people who have in their conscience, or in their collective history, some idea of persecution, especially by a state, makes the idea of a store of value not controlled by a single state very attractive. And so, in a way, it was hardwired into me at the time and made me, in a way, receptive to the idea of a decentralized currency.”
The former Reddit founder remains very connected to the cryptocurrency ecosystem today, despite the turmoil of the year 2022. In 2021, he founded the investment firm Seven Seven Six, which raised $500 million last year to fund startups in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
In addition, Alexis Ohanian has also stepped into the world of NFTs ( Non-Fungible Tokens) .
He reportedly purchased an NFT from the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection last summer to give to his wife, Serena Williams, reports CryptoPotato.
Bad crypto news for Reddit: sued by WallStreetBets
A few days ago, the founder of the subreddit WallStreetBets (WSB), Jaime Rogozinski, who has also become popular thanks to crypto, sued Reddit.
Specifically, the complaint states that Reddit removed as a moderator of its own forum Rogozinski, due to an alleged violation of company policy for attempting to monetize a community.
The WSB community on Reddit was founded back in 2012, but did not explode until early 2021. In 2020, Rogozinski was forcibly removed from Reddit, including preventing him from registering the community’s name.
In the WBS subreddit, information and investment advice was exchanged. Primarily speculators, so much so that they were even able to influence the prices of some stocks, including those of GameStop (GME).
In any case, the lawsuit points out that in March 2020 the WBS subreddit exceeded one million subscribers, and later Reddit took away his ability to moderate the forum.
Rogozinski claims he spent years of hard work building the WALLSTREETBETS brand, carefully starting and cultivating the community to ensure the board was in line with Reddit’s policy.
Rogozinski says he carefully expanded the content moderation team while maintaining the ability to enforce rules. Despite this, at some point Reddit allegedly took control of the group, invoking his moderation rules as a pretext.
Indeed, the same complaint admits that the group was exploited to promote certain business ventures, including the book “WallStreetBets: How Boomers Made the World’s Biggest Casino for Millenials,” written by Rogozinski himself.
However, the complaint suggests that the real motive may be something else. In fact, he reports that in March 2020, Rogozinski officially applied for registration of the WALLSTREETBETS brand with the US Trademark Office (USPTO), and in April, without warning, Reddit suspended Rogozinski’s account for seven days on charges of attempting to monetize a community.
Hence, the rule violated would be Section 7 of the User Agreement then in effect, which stated that no moderation actions could be performed in exchange for any form of compensation and that no agreement could be entered into with a third party on behalf of Reddit, or any moderated subreddit, without Reddit’s written approval.
Reddit and the NFT world: the latest news
Recently, Reddit also broke the record with the most NFTs minted on the platform. In fact, in a single day, as many as 255,000 NFTs were minted and the number of Reddit NFT holders increased from 3.5 million to about 5 million.
Reddit had been the talk of the town thanks to the staggering increase in prices of its NFT collections to excesses of 799%. The previous record of 200,000 daily mints was eclipsed bringing the number of Reddit NFT holders to 4.4 million wallets.
These overwhelmingly belong to users of the social platform. Reddit’s social media is very connected to the cryptocurrency world: millions of users have always exchanged news and information regarding the ecosystem.
Given the great interest in the crypto world on the platform, it was inevitable that the founders and managers of Reddit themselves would take an interest in this world, prompting their social network to implement a series of moves to take advantage of blockchain technology.
