- In 2012, Liron Shapira angel invested $10,000 in Coinbase and later sold his stake for $6 million.
- If he hadn’t diversified, Shapira’s stake would’ve been worth around $25 million when he exited.
- The blockchain skeptic breaks down why he now thinks all of crypto is “essentially worthless.”
Despite having profited millions from crypto, Liron Shapira says the nascent space is “essentially worthless” and “should all be shut down.”
This is a sentiment often expressed by bulge bracket bank execs, FOMO investors who lost their life savings from risky bets, and those who’ve fallen prey to scammy NFT projects.
As both an early bitcoin holder and angel investor in Coinbase, Shapira has positioned himself uniquely – whether purposefully or not – in a market prone to volatility and somehow exited unscathed. Although around 50% of the 34 year old’s net worth comes from investments in the industry, he’s become one of crypto’s most vocal critics.
In 2007, Shapira began researching cryptography at the University of California, Berkeley. He later purchased 200 bitcoin, when the token was trading around $5 each, an investment that would have been worth roughly $3.9 million on Tuesday, according to Messari. In the most bullish scenario, he thought bitcoin could be “the world’s most optimal payment structure.”
Bitcoin was interesting, Shapira says, because it…
