Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who married tennis superstar Serena Williams in 2017, has revealed that he has made $50 million in profits from early investments in the ether cryptocurrency and shares in Coinbase.
In an interview published Tuesday, Ohanian told Forbes that he spent $15,000 to buy about 50,000 tokens of what was then ether in 2014, which would be worth about $80 million today if he had kept it all.
He revealed that some of the proceeds from his crypto investments went towards his wife’s 17-carat diamond engagement ring, estimated to be worth approximately $3 million, as well as funding new venture capital investments and charitable donations.
Ohanian says he first bought ether at about 30 cents a token, before most of the general public had heard of the cryptocurrency. It now trades at around $1,600, and is the second largest crypto by market capitalization after bitcoin.
“In retrospect, I didn’t invest nearly as much as I should have,” Ohanian told the outlet, saying he first learned about ether during meetings with the founders of Coinbase during early investment talks.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who married tennis superstar Serena Williams in 2017, has revealed that he has made $50 million in profits from early crypto investments.
Some of the proceeds from his Ether and Coinbase investments went toward his wife’s 17-carat diamond engagement ring, estimated to be worth approximately $3 million
Through his former venture fund Initialized, Ohanian was an early-stage investor in Coinbase, the crypto exchange that went public in 2021 and now has a market capitalization of nearly $14 billion.
With the proceeds from his Coinbase stock, Ohanian donated $1 million to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s non-profit Know Your Rights Camp.
He also plowed $26 million in profits from his Coinbase investment into a new Florida-based venture firm, organized in September 2020.
Called 776, after the first Olympic Games held in 776 BC, the venture fund is heavily focused on startups that use blockchain, the ledger technology behind cryptocurrency, in social networking contexts.
This includes non-fungible tokens (NFTs) used as membership cards, which can be traded on the open market to serve as tickets to online or physical events.
Ohanian is a big fan of NFTs, earning more than 700 of the digital tokens, which have grown in popularity as collectibles in recent years.
Some of his NFTs are the traditional digital art most familiar to the public, but others are designed to offer various benefits, such as early access to a startup’s metaverse.
Other NFTs he owns even secure ownership rights to real estate in Georgia and a Web3 domain registry.
Ohanian says he first bought ether at about 30 cents a token, before most of the general public had heard of the cryptocurrency. It now retails for around $1,600
Coinbase stock is down from its 2021 debut, but Ohanian still made a handsome profit on his initial investment in the crypto exchange
Ohanian gifted his favorite NFT to his wife, and wore a version of the image as a pin to the 2021 Met Gala in New York,
By carrying the NFT image and generating news coverage, Ohanian likely increased its value
In August 2021, Ohanian spent $550,000 worth of ether at today’s prices on seven NFT artworks that he believed resembled his wife Williams.
He gifted her his favorite and wore a version of the image as a pin to the 2021 Met Gala in New York, claiming the move in a tweet to raise awareness and gain media coverage.
“Now we’ve put it into the culture,” he told Forbes, noting that the move likely increased NFT’s value if they ever wanted to sell it.
Ohanian is best known for founding the online forum Reddit in 2005, and together with his wife, the couple have an estimated net worth of around $300 million.
The couple share a daughter, named Olympia.
In June 2020, Ohanian resigned from Reddit’s board, asking to be replaced by a black candidate in response to the police killing of George Floyd.
His latest venture, 776, raised a $176 million fund to invest in crypto, which quickly sank to just $6 million as the sector suffered a sharp selloff last year.
The firm is reportedly expected to announce a capital raising of $776 million later this year, 30% of which will be used to invest in Web3 startups.
