Ethereum’s co-founder says he’s done with crypto because it’s too risky – and only represents a small bit of what the world needs
- Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio told Bloomberg he’s quitting the crypto world.
- “I don’t feel necessarily safe in this space,” he said.
- The Canadian investor wants to sell his current venture Decentral for fiat money rather than crypto.
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Anthony Di Iorio, a co-founder of the ethereum blockchain, is wrapping up his time in the cryptocurrency world due to personal safety concerns, and because he no longer wants to be known as the “crypto guy.”
He recently told Bloomberg he wasn’t too encouraged by the risk profile attached to the industry.
“I don’t feel necessarily safe in this space,” he said. “If I was focused on larger problems, I think I’d be safer.”
The 48-year-old Canadian has had a security team since 2017, and mostly been accompanied on his travels, Bloomberg said. He soon plans to sell his current blockchain venture Decentral to focus on philanthropy and other projects unrelated to crypto.
Decentral, founded in 2014, is a Toronto-based wallet and crypto services provider whose flagship product, Jaxx Liberty, counted about 1 million customers this year.
Di Iorio, who estimates his startup is worth “hundreds of millions,” expects to strike a deal in fiat money, or in equity, rather than in crypto. Forbes lists his own net worth as high as $1 billion.
He further told Bloomberg he wants to transition to being someone who takes on complex problems. He’s currently involved with an initiative called Project Arrow which is involved with a zero-emission concept vehicle run by a high-school friend.
Di Iorio co-founded ethereum in 2014 along with seven others in Switzerland in a rented house they called the “spaceship.” Among them, Vitalik Buterin is the only one still working on the blockchain. Ether, the network’s native token and the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, held a market value of $221 billion as of Monday, according to data from coinmarketcap.com.
Ether has continued to grow in popularity this year, showing a 53% increase in trading volumes quarter-on-quarter to an average of $3.25 billion a day on global exchanges, a report from Coinbase shows. Meanwhile, bitcoin has seen a 14% decline in the same period to $4.01 billion.
“I will incorporate crypto when needed, but a lot of times, it’s not,” Di Iorio said. “It’s really a small percentage of what the world needs.”
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