How Alexis Ohanian Turned $15K into $82 Million With Ethereum

Alexis Ohanian – Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Reddit – revealed he is an early Ethereum investor and purchased 50,000 ETH during the asset’s presale in 2014.

His stash is currently worth nearly $82 million.

Decentralization Drove his Investment Decision

The 39-year-old entrepreneur and investor of Armenian heritage said his ancestors’ tragic history is among the main reasons he is fond of the cryptocurrency industry.

In a recent interview for Forbes, he said some of his great-grandparents were decapitated by Turkish soldiers during the Armenian genocide in 1915. The Ottomans also confiscated his family’s heirloom rugs and other personal belongings. 

As such, Ohanian has become a huge supporter of assets that centralized institutions can not seize:

“Any group of people who have in their consciousness, or in their collective history, some idea of persecution, especially by a state, makes the idea of a store of value that is not controlled by any single state very attractive. And so, in some ways, it was hardwired in me then and made me, in a way, receptive to the idea of a decentralized currency.”

Ohanian understood that a blockchain protocol called Ethereum was about to be launched almost a decade ago and invested $15,000 in its native token – ETH. This means he bought the cryptocurrency for roughly $0.30 per token.

His investment is now worth approximately $82 million, a staggering 546,000% return. However, Ohanian wished he could have bought more at the time:

“In hindsight, I didn’t invest nearly as much as I should have.”

He disclosed in 2021 that he has “a lot” of Ethereum without providing further details. 

His Other Crypto Forays

Apart from co-creating Reddit, Ohanian has founded another entity – the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. It raised $500 million at the beginning of 2022 to invest in cryptocurrency start-ups and doubled down with another $177 million fundraiser several months later. 

Ohanian is also a proponent of non-fungible tokens. He purchased an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection last summer and gifted it to his wife – the tennis superstar Serena Williams.