Reddit Co-Founder’s Ethereum Investment Grows Over 5,000%: Here’s The Complete Story

Alexis Ohanian, the husband of legendary tennis player Serena Williams and cofounder of social media giant Reddit, is extremely bullish on decentralized financial markets. According to a post by the media outlet Forbes, the 39-year-old entrepreneur invested approximately $15,000 in Ethereum (ETH) during the pre-seed period in 2014. Notably, Ohanian purchased 50,000 Ethers at 30 cents after the 2013 Bitcoin bull market.

Ethereum Trading At Over 5,000% Returns

With ETH trading around $1,638 on Wednesday, Ohanian’s Ether bag has scaled over 5,460 X. The ex-Reddit leader thinks the NFTs are heavily undervalued despite the cryptocurrency winter, which has sustained over a year.

Moreover, his generational trauma, which includes the Armenian genocide and wealth seizure by the Turkish soldiers during World War I, has significantly contributed to his advocacy of decentralised financial ecosystems.

“Any group of people who have in their consciousness, or 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 decentralised currency,” Ohanian noted.

Notably, Ohanian noted that he did not invest as much as he should have despite recognising the potential of blockchain technology back then in 2014. He ostensibly heard of the Ethereum network during a Coinbase Global meeting and was incredibly fascinated.

The Bigger Picture 

The Ethereum network remains the king of smart contracts and a decentralized financial ecosystem. Most institutional investors have tapped into the Ethereum network, including through its scaling solutions Polygon (MATIC). In late 2021, Polygon network and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six announced a $200 million initiative to back projects at the intersection of social media and Web3.