Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, revealed last year that digital assets take a larger percentage of his whole investment portfolio. Seven Seven Six, his venture capital firm, has since then participated in a funding round worth $5 million for Lolli, a Bitcoin reward app, and invested in Quicknode, a blockchain infrastructure firm.
The question is, where did the Reddit co-founder put his money? Partially in Ethereum, at least.
“I think Ethereum got the most to prove really in the next one to two years or show some potential because there are numerous applications,” said Ohanian to Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview on Squawk Box of CNBC. “The non-fungible tokens are just the beginning of what is getting built on the Ethereum network and of a truth; that’s where most of my holdings are”
Unlike the BTC blockchain, which is used for mostly creation and secured transaction of digital currency, the ETH blockchain used more of smart contract code that sideline third-party and allow people to set up their application on the blockchain. The use of the Blockchain is in two major cases, namely decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The NFTs are digital deeds of ownership that are used mostly to convey ownership rights to digital assets like artwork, trading cards, virtual collectibles, or physical ones. Meanwhile, DeFi refers to any financial protocol that enables people to trade, lend, or borrow without external financial institutions.
These two areas have seen tremendous growth in the previous year. According to DeFi Pulse, about $60 billion worth of tokens are around the ETH DeFi protocols, which are compared roughly to the $1 billion last year. This year, the NFTs have done about $2 billion in sales, and a larger percentage of that stems from the ETH network where they appeared originally.
Though the Reddit co-founder is investing deeply in Ethereum, he is open to whatever emerges, and ultimately, he thinks the United States must work lightly in allowing the development of blockchain innovations. Citing the decision of El Salvador recently on making BTC a legal tender, Ohanian said, “As a person, I will not support a deep consideration of such regulation now. Eventually, there are great opportunities to seize as a country, and I hope we will be at the right side of it.”
