In 2016, Dan Morehead started a world tour to preach Bitcoin. Morehead, a former trader at Goldman Sachs and Tiger Management, turned orange a few years ago, believes Bitcoin will reshape the global economy. He believed in the currency so enthusiastically that he came out of semi-retirement and reshaped his hedge fund Pantera Capital into one of the world’s first bitcoin funds.
The new action, launched in 2013, erupted with a roaring start, backed by two fellow Princeton alumni from Morehead, Princeton alumni Pete Briger and Mike Novogratz, both private equity giant bastions. The trio, along with Glee, watched Pantera buy bitcoins, initially priced at $65 and soared to over $1,000 by the end of the year. But then, the disaster happened when hackers cleaned up the main exchanges in the fledgling cryptocurrency industry, MT Gox and Bitcoin, which saw prices drop by 85%. “People would say, ‘Aren’t you doing that dead Bitcoin thing?’” Morehead recalls. “It’s still alive!” he will respond.
During a 2016 Gospel Bitcoin trip, Morehead attended 170 meetings, each time entering the office of potential investors and spending an hour arguing why new currencies are the most compelling opportunity. The result: He raised only $1 million and $1 million for his flailing fund. Worse, Morehead’s own expenses total about $17,000. “I made $100 in the conference trying to promote people buying bitcoin,” he told him. wealth.
Less than a decade later, with Bitcoin launching $120,000, Morehead’s cruel early obstacles felt like something from the founder’s myth—just there, the story of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who tinkered with Warren Buffett and Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s stocks in Jobs’ “Garage of Parents”, trading stocks at Omaha dinner.
Today, Pantera manages $4 billion in assets from different crypto funds. Its shares include digital assets such as Bitcoin Ethereumand venture capital investments in projects such as Circle, Public In June, Bitstamp acquired it for $200 million earlier this year. But what sets the company from the crowded field of crypto VC is that its early remodeling status is the bridge between traditional financial buttons and the cryptocurrency field that once was Renégard. In the middle is Morehead, an unknown person in an industry dominated by a larger role than life.
“I’m stubborn and I totally believe (Bitcoin) will change the world,” Morehead told wealth. “So I keep moving forward.”
Princeton Mafia
Before Wall Street penetrated the blockchain industry, Morehead was trapped in a messy world of early cryptocurrencies. Morehead is a two-sport athlete from Princeton, and in football and heavyweight crew, his youth still had broad shoulders and square chin. His tailored numbers are far from the type of idol crumbs of Wir, and they spend most of their time on internet message boards. Morehead, by contrast, comes from the traditional financial world. He still rarely doesn’t have a blazer.
Morehead has had a long trading career before learning about Bitcoin. After serving at Goldman Sachs and Tiger, he founded his own hedge fund Pantera, which was extinguished during the 2008 financial crisis, just as a dark figure named Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world in an online white paper.
Morehead heard about Bitcoin from his brother in 2011 and was vaguely aware that Princeton classmate Gavin Andresen was running a website, Emitted 5 bitcoins for any user who uses verification code (current street value: $575,000). But Morehead didn’t think too much until a few years later, when another classmate Briger invited Morehead to have coffee at the San Francisco Fortress office and called out Crypto with Novogratz.
Tech is known for its so-called “Mafia”, a follower of employees of prominent organizations such as PayPal who continue to lead the next generation of startups. In cryptocurrency, this is not a company, but a university, and Princeton is responsible for the industry’s most influential projects. Briger and Novogratz are both major supporters of Pantera, and Morehead even moved into the empty office space of the Fortress SF office. Briger remains a powerful, despite the presence of Crypto, recently seated on Michael Saylor’s $100 billion Bitcoin Holdings Corporate Strategy Committee. Novogratz continues to discover Galaxy, one of the largest cryptocurrency groups. Another classmate, Joe Lubin, continues to be Ethereum.
But back in 2013, Ivy League graduates working in the rare fields of private equity and macro trading seemed to be interested in Bitcoin. Black people tell wealth He first learned from Argentine entrepreneur and early cryptocurrency company Wences Casares while sharing a room in a young presidential organization in the San Juan Islands. Briger soon saw the appeal of disrupting global payment systems, which he insisted on today, although he believes Bitcoin is still in its infancy. He said Bitcoin reflects the promise of the internet, which helps with new information flows. “The fact that the currency movement will not go in the same way is indeed a shame,” he said.
After sharing this idea with Novogratz, they thought Morehead, who had experience working in the forex market, would be the right person. When Morehead decided to devote the rest of his financial career to crypto, he renamed Pantera as a Bitcoin fund and opened it to outside investors. Briger and Novogratz both signed as limited partners, with Fortress and Venture Capital Benchmark and Ribbit Take General Partners’ bets, although they will quit later. His veteran mentor at Tiger Julian Robertson even supported the later fund.
Pantera’s Rebirth
In the early days of Hurley-Burly, entrepreneurs had to face dramatic booms and busts that made today’s volatility look like tiny buoys. But, Novogratz recalls, wild-priced drum-type mountain is not the biggest headache. First, it’s just trying to buy BTC.
He’s gone Common casesIt was only one year old at the time, trying to buy 30,000 bitcoins, which would be sold for about $2 million. He came across a pop-up window, and his limit was $50. After trying to solve Olaf Carlson-Wee– Coinbase’s first employee will continue to be a well-known cryptocurrency figure in itself – the company agreed to raise its limits all the way to $300.
However, Morehead’s most impressive achievement may stick to it during the low price period between 2013 and 2016, when prices remained in the basement and no one outside the blockchain community on the island paid a lot of advice to Bitcoin. “Dan beats the sidewalk there during the quiet time of crypto-no shit,” Novigraz told wealth.
The era still had its highlights, including three annual meetings held by Morehead Lake Lake House. On the one hand, Exchange Kraken founder Jesse Powell chose to cancel the private jet rented in Morehead and instead drive. “There is a large part of the Bitcoin community (there) he is worried about whether the plane crashes, which will cause Bitcoin to fall,” Morehead recalls.
Unlike many fellow countrymen, Morehead never positioned itself as “Bitcoin Extra Long” or some people think that other cryptocurrencies should not exist. back purchase At 2% of the global Bitcoin supply, Pantera became an early investor in Ripple Labs, which created the digital asset XRP. “I’m thinking about Bitcoin is obviously the most important thing,” Morehead said. “But there is no internet company.”
According to Morehead, Pantera has made money on 86% of its venture capital. This is a stunning number considering the vast majority of startups powered by VCs fail. Cryptocurrencies may be more forgiving, as many projects come with cryptocurrencies, meaning that even if the startup’s products are nowhere to go, they will often endure speculative value.
Morehead has now spent half a year in Puerto Rico, which has become a hotbed of cryptocurrencies. Joey Krug, then a partner at Pantera and now Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, moved there and Morehead decided to take action. He estimates there are 1,000 blockchain entrepreneurs on the island, although they have attracted Review Used to increase real estate prices. Morehead faces investigation by the Senate Finance Committee on whether he violated federal tax laws, moved to the island and earned more than $850 million in capital gains from Pantera. he Tell this New York Times Earlier this year wealth.
The Future of Bitcoin
Morehead acknowledged that unlike many other venture capital firms, Pantera was far from members and Pantera was far from gambling. Nevertheless, he believes it should not decentralize blockchain to reshape the broader goals of global finance. “It’s ridiculous to try to tear down the blockchain industry because it’s a bit sideways,” he said. “(GameStop) doesn’t mean the entire U.S. stock market is polluted.”
Pantera continues to grow, including raising a fifth venture capital fund with a $1 billion target, Morehead said the company will close after completing investments in its fourth fund later this year. Pantera also has it move Enter the red hot realm of digital assets treasury, where publicly traded companies buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.
But Bitcoin remains at the heart of Pantera’s strategy. At the end of last year, its Bitcoin fund beat 1,000 times, with a lifetime return of more than 130,000%. When asked to predict where Bitcoin is heading, Morehead always has the same answer: the price will double in a year. While Morehead acknowledges that fast-growing days may be slowing down, in most cases simple models work. He believes Bitcoin will still rise another order of magnitude, meaning it will be close to $1,000,000, although he thinks it will be the last 10-fold increase.
If Bitcoin never reaches this milestone, Morehead would be happy to take on the criticism. After all, in 2016, he worked hard to pay $500 for cryptocurrency. Less than ten years later, he had just begun. He told wealth. “I feel like we have decades to go.”
