You would expect early bitcoin adopters to all be swimming in millions right now. For one particular influencer, this isn’t the case.
When Andreas Antonopolous, a well revered and extremely influential voice in the blockchain world, admitted to having sold his bitcoin early in the game to pay his rent and support his family, the crypto community rallied behind him and flooded his wallet with $1.6 million worth of bitcoin.
Who is this influencer, and why do people admire him so much?
Like most of us, Antonopolous wasn’t moved by bitcoin when he first heard about it. He brushed it off as digital monopoly money, and didn’t think about it for half a year or so. Later on, when he stumbled upon it again, he decided to read Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper. It was then that his eyes were opened to the possibilities this invention could bring:
“The blockchain isn’t a system of currency. It is a platform of trust… Currency is just the first application. It is the concept of decentralization applied to the human communication of value.”
He then began to explore how he could build his career in the blockchain world, but around this time in 2012, there were few opportunities to get involved professionally, and few were willing to pay a viable wage for his work. While he did purchase a few bitcoin, he ultimately had to sell them off early.
Since his dive down the bitcoin rabbit hole, Antonopolous has written and published hundreds of articles, educating his audience on a wide range of topics — from cryptography, security, distributed networks, cloud computing and bitcoin, to the ethics and politics the distributed systems we’re building. He has written several technical books, delivered a number of inspirational speeches on the potential of cryptocurrency, and is considered one of the most trusted and unbiased thought leaders in this space.
He boasts almost 400k followers on twitter, where crypto enthusiasts flock to collect some of his insight on current events surrounding the crypto world. If you want to learn from him, he has uploaded countless videos on a variety of blockchain topics, entirely free of charge.