Hall of Flame – Cointelegraph Magazine
Name: Simon Dixon
Anonymous: no
Twitter followers: 109.1K
Known for: Co-founder of Bank To The Future and the guy who wrote the first published book on Bitcoin.
Who exactly is this guy?
Simon Dixon is a true Bitcoin AND He is the author of the first published book on Bitcoin in the world Bank for the futurewhich was released in February 2012, and has splashed over $1 billion in cash investments into “over 100” different crypto companies, including Kraken, Ripple Labs, and — err — Celsius.
Dixon stumbled upon Bitcoin when he was “deep in debt” after his ambitious attempt to start a traditional bank didn’t go according to plan. “I failed that task,” he admits.
Instead of throwing in the towel, Dixon eventually founded BnkToTheFuture, an online investment platform that crowdsources private equity funding, giving smaller investors who can satisfy regulatory requirements in their own countries access to early-stage but risky VC-style opportunities, with Celsius, Kraken, Bitfinex and Securitize among them.
More recently, he has “accidentally become the Chapter 11 guy” as he seems to have psychic powers to predict which crypto firm is going to enter Chapter 11 next.
“I told everyone that Celsius was going to go bankrupt before it did [bankrupt]. I was the one who called out Digital Currency Group as a company likely to go bankrupt. I [predicted] the BlockFi [would] enter Chapter 11.”
What led to Twitter fame?
Dixon built his 109,000 followers organically and says he “never really invested significant time in providing content to people.” But he’s been “advocating for Bitcoin since 2011,” and his following grew over the years by sharing content about “building and protecting your wealth using Bitcoin,” and he says that Bitcoin personally “transformed” all of his finances into life.
More recently, he has seen an influx of followers due to his advocacy for victims who have lost their life savings in recent crypto exchange failures, particularly those of Celsius.
“This was such a level of fraud that I could not remain silent.”
What to expect in his Twitter content
While Dixon continues to provide useful Bitcoin content for the crypto community, he recently advocated for “more and more people in these Chapter 11 bankruptcies.”
“I started sharing content about how to optimize these bankruptcy proceedings to get the most out of your creditors, and that seemed to lead to a lot of people wanting to join me on Twitter Spaces.”
Check out the shots fired at FTX through simple arts and crafts work on a newspaper article.
He is often seen motivating those who lose hope of ever getting their money back from Celsius.
Dixon even managed to get Elon Musk on the infamous Twitter Space when he “covered FTX crash live” as investors suspended withdrawals.
It was chaos, as Musk had “just completed the acquisition” of Twitter as well.
Dixon took the opportunity to ask Musk if “there was any place for Bitcoin on Twitter.”
“He was only meant to be there for 30 minutes. He actually stayed in the room for about an hour.”
Oh yeah, and from time to time he posts about his casual hookups with world leaders.
Here Dixon is pictured hanging out with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
Twitter likes
Dixon likes to follow people on Twitter who actually have a passion for crypto through good times and bad, not those who are just trying to cash in on shilling shitcoins.
“I’m interested in people who have been consistent with Bitcoin when it’s not cool to be consistent with Bitcoin.”
Dixon said he’s a big fan of “old school” Andreas Antonopoulos, as he doesn’t get as much “credit as he deserves these days.”
He said Antonopoulos did a lot of the hard work explaining Bitcoin in its early days, “when it was very difficult to explain to people.”
Subscribe
The most engaging read in blockchain. Delivered once a week.
Twitter Beefs
Top Quality Steak: Alex Mashinsky
Despite Dixon’s high profile, he has not had many public feuds.
This is not surprising considering that he is quite a nice and well behaved guy.
His only public beef is with the former CEO of now-defunct crypto-lending exchange Celsius, Alex Mashinsky.
After the collapse of Celsius, Mashinsky was told by his lawyers that “he’s not allowed to talk,” according to Dixon.
Dixon’s comment about the Celsius bankruptcy got on Mashinky’s nerves so much that he decided to ignore his lawyer’s advice and “broke his silence” to blame Dixon for “all this fraud.”
Dixon said Mashinsky “created a conspiracy theory” that Dixon has all the creditors’ money and is being paid by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) to try to “take down Celsius.”
Dixon encouraged his Twitter followers to go out and sue Mashinsky, saying it would be a “valuable” resource for Celsius.
Future prospects
Dixon is not a fan of the Chapter 11 process, which he believes is a “scam” and just a “giant money grab” to steal client money.
While Dixon is a big fan of Bitcoin, he has no firm price predictions. He thinks in terms of “four-year cycles” around the halvings, and right now he said we’re “two years into the fourth cycle,” which is about surviving quantitative easing.
He said this will be a tough one because we have never proven that Bitcoin can survive when dollars are not printed indefinitely.
The final phase will be about surviving central banks’ digital currencies, which if they succeed, he believes Bitcoin will have “cemented itself as the store of value in the world”.
“This is going to change the world.”
also read
Characteristics
Wild, Wild East: Why the ICO Boom in China Refuses to Die
Characteristics
Gen Z and NFT: Redefining Ownership for Digital Natives
