jakiro
Source: Fortune; Compilation: AIMan@Bitchain Vision
In 2016, Dan Morehead embarked on a global journey to spread the gospel of Bitcoin.Morehead, a former trader at Goldman Sachs and Tiger Fund, developed a strong interest in Bitcoin a few years ago, believing that Bitcoin will reshape the global economy.His confidence in Bitcoin is so strong that he came back from semi-retirement and reshaped his hedge fund Pantera Capital into one of the first bitcoin funds in the world.
The new business started well in 2013, with two Princeton alumni of Morehead, Pete Briger and Mike Novogratz, both from private equity giant Fortress – both of whom support the business as well.The three watched with delight as the Bitcoin that Pantera initially acquired for $65, soared to more than $1,000 by the end of 2013.However, the disaster ensued: Hackers ransacked Mt. Gox, the main exchange in the emerging cryptocurrency industry, and Bitcoin price plummeted 85%.“People would say, ‘Didn’t you do that dead Bitcoin project?’” Morehead recalls.”It’s still alive!” he would respond.
In 2016, Morehead attended 170 meetings during his journey to promote Bitcoin, each time walking into the office of potential investors and spending an hour explaining why this new currency is the most attractive investment opportunity.result:He raised only $1 million for the shaky fund.Worse, Morehead’s own journey wine costs total about $17,000.“I can only make $100 per meeting, just to promote people buying bitcoin everywhere,” he told Fortune.
Less than a decade later, with Bitcoin’s price breaking $120,000, Morehead’s early hard-working experiences are like the plot in the founder’s myth, comparable to the story of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak tinkering in the garage of Jobs’ parents, or the story of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger swapping stock tips at an Omaha dinner.
Today, Pantera manages over $5 billion in assets covering different crypto funds.Its holdings include digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as venture capital in projects such as Circle (listed in June this year) and Bitstamp (acquired by Robinhood earlier this year for $200 million).Pantera stands out among many crypto venture capital firms in its pioneering position, building a legendary bridge between the conservative traditional financial world and the once rebellious crypto field.Its core character is Morehead, an unknown figure in an industry dominated by legends.
“I’m stubborn and I totally believe that Bitcoin will change the world,” Pantera told Fortune.“So I will keep going.”
Princeton “gangster”
Before Wall Street penetrated the blockchain industry, Morehead stood out in the chaos of early cryptocurrencies.As a football and heavyweight rower at Princeton, Morehead still retains the wide shoulders and square chin he used to be when he was young.His figure is completely different from those who spend most of his time on online message boards, who are thin and unconventional.In contrast, Morehead comes from the traditional financial world.To this day, he still rarely wears a suit jacket.
Before getting involved in Bitcoin, Morehead had a years of trading career.After working with Tiger Fund for a while, he founded his hedge fund Pantera, but the fund went bankrupt during the 2008 financial crisis, when a mysterious figure named Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world in an online white paper.
Morehead first heard about Bitcoin in 2011, when he heard about Bitcoin from his brother and vaguely knew that Princeton classmate Gavin Andresen runs a website where any user can get 5 Bitcoins (currently a market value of $575,000) as long as he completes a verification code.But Morehead didn’t think much, until a few years later, another classmate Briger invited Morehead to the San Francisco office of Fortres’s company for coffee and talk about cryptocurrencies, and Novogratz also called.“Since then, I’ve been obsessed with Bitcoin,” Morehead said.
The tech community is known for its so-called “gangsters” – a group of employees from well-known organizations such as PayPal continues to lead the next generation of startups.In the crypto space, it’s not a company, but a university, and Princeton University has influenced some of the most influential projects in the crypto industry.Briger and Novogratz are both major supporters of Pantera, Morehead even moved into the vacant office space at the Fortress San Francisco office.Briger, though behind the scenes, still has a strong influence in the crypto space, and recently became a board member of Michael Saylor’s $100 billion Bitcoin holding company Strategy.Novogratz later founded Galaxy, one of its largest crypto groups.Another classmate, Joe Lubin, later became one of the co-founders of Ethereum.
But in 2013, Ivy League graduates worked in scarce areas such as private equity and macro trading, and their interest in Bitcoin still seems out of reach.Briger told Fortune that he first heard about Bitcoin at the Argentine entrepreneur and early adopter of cryptocurrency, Wences Casares, who lived in the same room with Casares at a party organized by the youth president in the San Juan Islands.Briger soon saw the appeal of disrupting the global payment system—a view he still sticks to today, even though he believes Bitcoin is still in its infancy.He said Bitcoin reflects the prospects of the Internet, which promotes a new form of information flow.“It’s a pity that the money flows differently,” he said.
After sharing this idea with Novogratz, they thought Morehead, who has experience in the forex market, was the right person.When Morehead decided to devote the rest of his financial career to the cryptocurrency space, he changed Pantera to Bitcoin Fund and reopened it to outside investors.Both Briger and Novogratz contributed as LPs, while Fortress and venture capital firms Benchmark and Ribbit invested as GPs, although they both later quit.Morehead’s mentor at Tiger Fund and legendary investor Julian Robertson even supported a later fund.
Pantera’s Rebirth
In the early hustle and bustle of cryptocurrencies, entrepreneurs had to face a drastic rise and fall, and today’s volatility seems to be just a flash in the pan.But Novogratz recalls that violent price fluctuations were not the biggest trouble.The most troublesome thing is how to buy Bitcoin at the beginning.
Morehead login Coinbase, which was only established for a year, wanted to buy 30,000 bitcoins, and the price was about $2 million at that time.A window pops up prompting him to have a limit of $50.After trying to communicate with Olaf Carlson-Wee, Coinbase’s first employee, Coinbase agreed to increase his credit to $300.Olaf Carlson-Wee later founded Polychain Capital and became a well-known cryptocurrency.
However, morehead’s most impressive achievement was perhaps persisting in the downturn from 2013 to 2016.Bitcoin prices were in a downturn at the time, and few people paid attention to Bitcoin outside the isolated blockchain community.“Morehead has been running around during those calm years of cryptocurrencies without any movement,” Novogratz told Fortune.
There were still many highlights during that period, including three annual meetings that Morehead hosted at his home in Lake Tahoe.In one of the meetings, Jesse Powell, co-founder of exchange Kraken, chose not to take a private jet chartered by Morehead, but drive it on his own.“Kraken has quite a bit of BTC in the Bitcoin community and he is worried that if the plane crashes, Bitcoin will collapse,” Morehead recalls.
Unlike many of its peers, Morehead has never positioned itself as a “Bitcoin Maximum,” or someone who believes no other cryptocurrency should exist.existAcquisition of 2% of the global Bitcoin supplyLater, Pantera became an early investor in Ripple Labs, which created the digital asset Ripple Co., Ltd. (XRP).“I think Bitcoin is obviously the most important thing,” Morehead said, “but there is more than one internet company.”
According to Morehead, 86% of Pantera’s venture capital is profitable.This number is truly shocking considering that the vast majority of venture-backed startups ended in failure.The investment environment for cryptocurrencies may be more tolerant, as many projects come with cryptocurrencies, meaning that even if the startup’s products are not making any progress, their speculative value is often sustainable.
Morehead now spends half of the year in Puerto Rico, which has become a hotbed of cryptocurrencies.At that time, Joey Krug, a partner of Pantera and currently manager of Founders Fund of Peter Thiel, moved there, and Morehead decided to move there too.He estimates there are 1,000 blockchain entrepreneurs on the island, but they are under scrutiny for pushing up real estate prices.Morehead faces an investigation by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee to investigate whether he violated federal tax laws for moving to the island and earning more than $850 million in capital gains from Pantera.He told The New York Times earlier this year that he believed he had “taken appropriate action on tax payments” and declined to comment further to Fortune.
The Future of Bitcoin
Morehead acknowledges that the cryptocurrency industry is full of gambling, andPantera is unlike many other venture capital firms, they stay away from memecoin.However, he believes that this should not distract people from the ambitious goal of blockchain reshaping global finance.“It’s ridiculous because of a little episode trying to destroy the blockchain industry,” he said. “GameStop doesn’t mean the entire U.S. stock market is polluted.”
Pantera continues to grow, including raising a fifth venture fund with a target size of $1 billion.Morehead said Pantera will finish the fundraising for the new fund after completing all investments in its fourth fund later this year.Pantera has also entered the hot digital asset treasury field, where digital asset treasury listed companies purchase cryptocurrencies and include them on their balance sheets.
But Bitcoin remains at the heart of Pantera’s strategy.By the end of 2024, its Bitcoin fund rose by 1,000 times, with a cumulative return of more than 130,000%.When asked about predictions about Bitcoin’s future trend, Morehead’s answer was consistent: the price will double in a year.In most cases, this simple model is effective, although Morehead acknowledges that the rapid growth momentum may be slowing down.He believes Bitcoin will still rise by another order of magnitude, which means it will be close to $1 million, although he thinks it will be the last time Bitcoin has seen a 10x increase.
If Bitcoin never reaches that milestone, Morehead is willing to bear criticism.After all, in 2016, when the price of Bitcoin was still at $500, he had worked hard to justify the cryptocurrency.And less than ten years later, he began to spread new beliefs.“My beliefs have never changed — but the vast majority of institutions have no confidence in that,” he said in an interview with Fortune. “I feel like we still have decades to go.”
