Guide to Real Crypto-And-Is You’ll Meet at a Party (Part 2) – Cointelegraph Magazine

In Part 1, we described three of the different types of crypto OGs you might encounter at an industry party.

They were: (1) shady supercoders and/or anon founders, (2) “recognized” and respected OG industry leaders like Vitalik Buterin and Brian Armstrong, and (3) the comeback OGs, trying to shake off the stink of a failed project.

This time we meet even more categories of crypto-and-is, with insights from insiders most familiar with them.

4. “NeoGs” market makers and traders

There are a select few crypto players who joined the game late, yet rose to prominence to become giants in terms of net worth and impact. Usually these are knowledgeable market makers and traders who are often mistaken for OGs.

Take, for example, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX exchange and the quant trading firm Alameda Research. In the midst of the recent crypto collapses, he gained even more prominence when he went in big to provide rescue operations and minimize infection.

Noobs might mistake SBF for an OG, but he first joined the industry in 2017. Bankman-Fried made his fortune from arbitrage crypto trading, which he leveraged to build his empire.

The 30-year-old is a self-made billionaire who is a regular in older financial media, invited to speak at all the top crypto conferences, and one of the standard industry representatives who weigh in on US congressional hearings. His wardrobe seems to consist entirely of FTX T-shirts.

SBF has famously stated that he doesn’t necessarily believe in the future of any cryptocurrency, but he sees them as attractive opportunities. Bottomline, he’s the type who’s in it “for the money” (but only for the altruistic donation at a later date).

“I don’t think you can call those who joined in 2017 an OG,” says Darius Sit, founder of the successful Singapore-based crypto trading firm QCP Capital, which he also founded that year.

“At least that’s my definition. I think OGs are hard core believers who went all in when no one else was paying attention to the space, so it’s certainly a long way before 2017.”

Like SBF, Sit was also in crypto primarily to make money, and since its founding, QCP Capital has become one of the world’s largest crypto options trading companies with $1.5 billion in assets deployed back in 2021.

venture arm was an early investor in many prominent projects, such as Deribit, dYdX, Algorand, Tokocrypto and Nansen.

Judging by their successes, and the fact that top three highest net worth in the cryptocurrency industry currently comes from market-making businesses, one wonders if the winners in the industry are the smarter opportunists, rather than the believers.

Sit down insists that market making is also a concrete use case and innovation of blockchain, rather than just making money.

“I think Sam and I shared – and probably still share – very similar views, and maybe I can provide some nuance here. A lot of crypto or blockchain initiatives promise incredible things that may or may not happen. But what is very real to me and what I believe in is the crypto capital markets.”

“To some extent this is nothing new,” he continues. “It’s the same market structures and practices with a different underlying: cryptoassets. At the same time, it’s also completely different.”

“Crypto is not tied to any particular country or authority; it is an unregulated asset class available to anyone from any jurisdiction. It is the only scalable financial ecosystem that is independent.”

He adds: “In a world where geopolitics has become increasingly unstable, I think that counts for something. I enjoy being part of this evolving market.”

In the wake of this year’s macro sell-off and the liquidation of many Singapore-based whale trading firms and exchanges such as Three Arrows Capital that sent shockwaves through the cryptocurrency market globally, QCP Capital has held its own.

“We were always wary of leverage and rehypothecation in the lending and borrowing markets, and so we never participated in a big way. I felt pretty stupid at times, especially when people around us were making billions off the balance sheet expansion and simple exploitation. Ultimately lastly, the choice to focus only on trading and developing the derivatives markets was perhaps not the most profitable, but it was the right one,” comments Sit.

At any networking party, you can find Sit having a quiet conversation outside with a couple of other people. “I don’t like crowds and prefer deep, quality conversations,” he says.

5. The flashy influencers and YOLO bros

Last but not least, influencers are the OGs most likely to throw a networking party in the first place, to convert normies into crypto investors.

Even the letters “AND” conjure up images of flamboyant, bling-bling-obsessed social media shiller types, wearing loud Bitcoin gear (cue The Bitcoin man), driving lambos and popping champagne in the clubs, or otherwise relaxing on a yacht somewhere in the Bahamas.

Often derided, they have played a crucial role in painting a dream of what is possible when jumping on the bandwagon of a deflationary asset class. They’ve all made life-changing amounts of money early on from cryptocurrency due to shrewd intuition or dumb luck, and they want the whole world to know about it.

Whether you buy flashy Lambos or superyachts or create a municipality on a tropical island, these people are passionate about enjoying life to the fullest. They tend to be attractive and inspiring with larger-than-life personalities, making them suitable as event promoters, marketers, content creators and social media influencers. For better or for worse, they are the face of the crypto industry in the mainstream.

“I think people like me, like Kyle Chasse, do the hard work daily of preaching the gospel of Bitcoin to the masses,” explains The Bitcoin Man – aka Herbert Sim, a social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and Twitter.

An easily recognizable regular at conferences, Sim carries a Bitcoin chain everywhere he goes and regularly posts on social media about the benefits of investing in cryptocurrency.

“I am very public about my identity because I have never done anything shady before. Also, I am only shilling Bitcoin and I 100% believe that it is safe and advisable for everyone to invest in Bitcoin.

“Back in the day, I remember a bunch of us would party hard at a club and we would flag to everyone that we got rich from Bitcoin. We would hire girls with big tits wearing tiny T-shirts with Bitcoin logos to drink with us in the club,” Sim recalls fondly.

Sim got into cryptocurrency during his student years at Oklahoma City University in the US. He helped a professor researching blockchain and got deep into the cypherpunk movement. “This was as early as 2009 and 2010. In 2010, someone I can’t reveal gave me some funding – around 100 thousand – to host CryptoChain University, one of the world’s oldest academic repositories for crypto and blockchain research and education.”

“The definition of OG is quite fluid, but I would say the latest deadline for OGs to enter cryptocurrency should be around 2014,” Sim said.

He has since worked in many different capacities in the industry, for example as Global Director of Operations for Huobi Exchange and as Head of Marketing for Cryptology. He also founded a UK-based venture capital fund brand “The Bitcoin Man.” In his spare time, he likes to draw illustrations and write fantasy novels inspired by the crypto industry.

“People like us, we are the life of the party; we are not industry jaded at all,” says Harry Horsfall, CEO of Zebu Digital – a Web3 startup platform accelerator and marketing agency based in London, UK.

Horsfall bought his first Bitcoin in 2011 and went all in around 2013. “I’m not a whale and I’m certainly not Lambo rich. I’ve lost my krypton throughout history, but the most important thing is to get back to it and keep believing in the future!” gushes Horsfall enthusiastically.

Before crypto, Horsfall ran music festivals, and now he organizes many Web3 parties, e.g. Zebu Life, Defi Life, Avalanche Summit, Ethereum Collective, Hijack Collective and so on.

“The thing about crypto parties is… they’re not that good because they’re predominantly male. So we used to hire girls all the time. Now things are changing and we’re happy to see more and more girls coming into the relationship 50 :50.

6. AND is a spectrum

This guide is a rough outline of the different types of OGs based on their roles and characteristics in the industry. But many OGs can span a few different categories, and others defy easy categorization.

What if you invested $1 in Bitcoin back in 2010? Want to count as an OG?

“No, an OG would be a person who originated the technology or used the technology to create new business opportunities that address key pain points that were previously ignored or unknown. I would not consider myself an OG, but an early casual believer adopter , as I invested $50 SGD in Bitcoin back in 2014. To date, this has been my best investment,” says Victoria Au, now business director at fractional real estate investment platform RealVantage.

Zing Yangwho first bought crypto in 2014 and became one of the chairmen of Litecoin, has an identity crisis around this label.

“I think I’m an OG from timeline and participation, but by my definition I feel like an impostor, as I’m not technical enough or part of the developer community that got in early since the 2009 days for ideological reasons or infatuation with the technology, she says.

Yang has now switched careers completely to join global food manufacturing conglomerate Cargill, where she feels she can make a more tangible contribution with her talent and skills.

“Being an OG isn’t all kittens and rainbows,” says Marcus Eng, a rare former child OG, who got into cryptocurrency 11 years ago when he was just 14. “I stumbled upon crypto in a Bitcoin forum. And I’ve had my fair share of adventures since then. I was also an early Dogecoin OG.”

Now 25 years old and working as an investment manager for QCP Capital, Eng believes that he has finally started to make a concrete contribution to the industry.

“When I was 14, I was so young. I was just kidding. I was a rebel and I advocated crypto-idealism. I also couldn’t manage my wealth well and lost a lot of it over the years. Now I am much more discerning and critical of the industry and able to help others navigate this area.”

Being rich overnight so early also gave him some mental problems. “For a while I was depressed because I lost the motivation to do anything in life other than for my own entertainment,” he says.

In conclusion, OG should simply mean anyone who has believed in the vision of blockchain since its early days, contributed to the industry, and adopted and invested significantly in cryptocurrencies since 2014.

“Remember, though, that there’s always someone who’s going to be ‘more OG’ than you in so many different ways. It’s not binary—it’s a spectrum,” Yang adds.

Check out part 1 of our guide to Real Life Crypto OGs below.

Insider’s Guide to Real Crypto-And-Is: Part 1