In 2016 Dan Morehead started a world tour to preach the gospel of Bitcoin. As a former dealer at Goldman Sachs and Tiger Management, Morehead had become orange -colored just a few years earlier and convinced that Bitcoin would re -change the global economy. He believed that the currency fervently came out of the semi-pension event to implement his hedge-fund pantera capital in one of the first Bitcoin funds in the world.
The new operation, which was introduced in 2013, started, with two supported by Morehead’s colleagues Princeton, Pete Briger and Mike Novogratz, both by private equity giant fortress. The trio watched with glee how Bitcoin bought by Pantera from Pantera at an initial price of 65 US dollars by the end of the year rose to over 1,000 US dollars. But then the catastrophe met when Hacker fell the main exchange of the Jäger -Krypto industry, MT GOX, and the price of Bitcoin fell by 85%. “People would say:” Didn’t you do the Bitcoin thing that died? “, Morehead recalls,” still lives! “He would answer.
During his trip to Evangelize Bitcoin in 2016, Morehead took 170 sessions, with each time taking part in the office of a prospective investor and spending an hour to argue why the new currency was the most convincing possible opportunity. The result: he managed to collect only 1 million US dollar for his stain fund. Even worse, Morehead’s own fees amounted to around 17,000 US dollars. “I earned $ 100 per meeting and went out there to evangelize people to buy bitcoins,” he says Assets.
Less than a decade later than Bitcoin presses 120,000 US dollars, Morehead’s brutal early slog feels like the stuff of start -up mythology – right up there with the stories of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak Tinkering in Jobs’ Garage or Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger Trading tips tips tips tips tips in an Omaha -Dinner party.
Today Pantera manages assets of over 4 billion US dollars in various cryptofonds. The stocks include digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereumas well as venture investments in projects such as circle that went to the public In June and Bitstamp, which was acquired by Robinhood for 200 million US dollars at the beginning of this year. However, what distinguishes the company from the overcrowded field of crypto VCS is the status of an early Movers as a famous bridge between the buttoned world of traditional finances and the once renegadic crypto sector. In the center is Morehead, an unsuccessful figure in an industry that is dominated by the size of survival.
“I am very persistent and I am totally convinced (Bitcoin) will change the world” Assets. “So I just went on.”
The Princeton Mafia
Back before the Wall Street infiltrated the blockchain industry, Morehead stuck out in the chaotic world of early crypto. Morehead is a two-sports athlete in Princeton in football and heavyweight crew and still has the broad shoulders and the square jaw of his youth. The figure he cut was far from the iconoclastic types who spent most of the time in the Internet measurement boards. In contrast, Morehead came from the conventional financial world. He is still rarely discovered without a blazer.
Morehead had a long trade career before learning something about Bitcoin. After Goldman Sachs and Tiger stays, he began his own hedge fund, Pantera, who brought into an online white book in an online white book during the 2008 financial crisis as a shadowy figure named Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin.
Morehead heard from his brother for the first time from Bitcoin in 2011 and was vague that a classmate from Princeton, Gavin Andresen, led a website that gave out 5 Bitcoins to each user to solve a captcha (current street value: 575,000 US dollars). But Morehead only thought about it a few years later when another classmate, Briger, Morehead in the San Francisco Office of Fortress invited to talk about Crypto, whereby Novogratz is calling. “Since then I have been owned by Bitcoin,” says Morehead.
Tech is famous for his so-called “Mafias” employees of employees of prominent organizations such as PayPal, who lead the next generation of startups. In crypto it is not a company, but a university in which Princeton is responsible for some of the most influential projects in the industry. Briger and Novogratz both served as important supporters of Pantera, with Morehead even moving to empty office space in the Fortress SF office. Briger remains a mighty, albeit behind the scenes in crypto, which recently used the board of Michael Saylors 100-billion dollar-bitcoin-holding company, strategy. Novogratz found Galaxy, one of the largest crypto conglomerates. And another classmate, Joe Lubin, became one of the co -founders of Ethereum.
But in 2013 it still seemed to be far-fetched that Ivy League graduates in the rare areas of private equity and macro handle would be interested in Bitcoin. Briger tells Assets That he first learned it from Wences Casares, an Argentine entrepreneur and an early crypto adoptive, while he shared a room during an organization of young presidents on the San Juan Islands. Briger quickly saw the attraction of building up the global payment system – a point that he continues to this day, even though he argues that Bitcoin is still in its infancy. He says that Bitcoin reflects the promise of the Internet, which enabled a new form of the flow of information. “The fact that money movement does not happen in the same way is a real shame,” he says.
After shared the idea with Novogratz, they thought that Morehead, who had experience in foreign exchange markets, would be the right person to bring them. When Morehead decided to dedicate the rest of his financial career at Crypto, he renamed Pantera as a Bitcoin fund and opened it again to external investors. Briger and Novogratz both signed Limited Partners, with Fortress and Venture companies Benchmark and Ribbit Taking General partner missions, even though they would withdraw later. His old mentor in Tiger, the legendary investor Julian Robertson, even supported a later fund.
Panteras rebirth
In the early days of Hurley-Burly from Crypto, entrepreneurs had to confront dramatic booms and busts that make the volatility of today look like smaller blips. But the wild price scooter coaster was not the biggest headache, Novogratz recalls. It was simply tried primarily to procure BTC.
He went to Coin baseThen only one year old to buy 30,000 bitcoins, which would have been sold for around $ 2 million. He was hit with a pop-up that his limit was $ 50. After trying to train it Olaf Carlson-Wee– The first employee of Coinbase, who would make themselves a famous crypto figure, agreed to increase his limit to $ 300.
However, Morehead’s most impressive performance may extend from 2013 to 2016 when the prices stayed in the basement and nobody paid a lot outside of the island blockchain community Bitcoin. “In these quiet years, in which Crypto did not make shit, then there was a hit on the sidewalk out there” Assets.
This era still had its highlights, including three annual conferences, which were organized by Morehead from his house in SeE Tahoe. At a Jesse Powell, the founder of the exchange Kraken, decided to take a private aircraft chartered by Morehead chartered and drove instead. “There was part of the Bitcoin community (there) that he feared that if the plane was crashed, it would take Bitcoin,” recalls Morehead.
In contrast to many of his compatriots, Morehead never positioned himself as “Bitcoin Maxi” or someone who argues that there should be no other cryptocurrencies. After Buy 2% of the global Bitcoin offer, Pantera, became an early investor in Ripple Labs that created the digital asset XRP. “The way I think about it is Bitcoin the most important thing,” says Morehead. “But there is no internet company.”
According to Morehead, Pantera has made money with 86% of its venture investments. It is an astonishing figure when you consider that the vast majority of the startups supported by VC fail. Krypto may be more forgiving because many projects are equipped with an accompanying cryptocurrency, which means that the speculative value remains frequently, even if the product of a startup does not come anywhere.
Morehead now spends six months in Puerto Rico, which has become a breeding ground for crypto. Joey Krug, then a partner at Pantera and now with Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, had moved down there, and Morehead decided to take the step. He estimates that there are 1,000 blockchain entrepreneurs on the island, even though they have drawn Test To increase real estate prices. Before an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, Morehead was about whether he was violating the federal tax laws by moving to the island and achieving capital gains of more than 850 million US dollars from Pantera. He told The New York Times At the beginning of this year, when he believed he was “appropriate in terms of my taxes”, it refused Assets.
Bitcoins future
Morehead recognizes that a large part of the crypto industry is saturated with gambling. In contrast to many other venture companies, Pantera from Memecoins stays away. Nevertheless, he argues that it should not distract itself from blockchain’s wider goal of changing the global finances. “It is ridiculous to defeat the Blockchain industry because of a small secondary references,” he says. “(Gamestop) does not mean that the entire US stock market is spoiled.”
Pantera continues to grow, including the increase in a fifth venture fund with a target of 1 billion US dollars that Morehead says that the company will be completed later this year after the investment has been completed. Pantera has it too moved In the red stoves area of Digital Asset Treasuries, in which publicly traded companies buy and keep cryptocurrencies for their balance sheets.
But Bitcoin remains the core of Pantera’s strategy. At the end of last year, his Bitcoin fund Punch 1,000x, with a lifelong return of over 130,000%. When asked about a prediction where Bitcoin is going, Morehead always had the same answer: the price will double in a year. For the most part, the simple model worked, although Morehead admits that the days of fast growth will probably slow down. He argues that Bitcoin will increase another magnitude, which means that it is approaching 1,000,000 US dollars, although he believes that this will be the last time that it has a 10 -time increase.
Morehead is happy to shoulder criticism when Bitcoin never reaches this milestone. After all, in 2016 he had difficulty realizing the cryptocurrency at 500 US dollars. And less than a decade later he starts. “I have the same conviction – the vast majority of institutions have zero,” he says Assets. “It feels like we have a few more decades.”
