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The Next Ethereum Will Come From a Dorm Room (or a College Dropout)

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Before Ethereum had a market cap, it was just an idea in a college dropout’s head.

Crypto’s biggest companies aren’t being planned in boardrooms. They’re being built in dorm rooms, group chats, and hackathons by founders who don’t wait for permission (many of them don’t finish college at all). This is not a coincidence. It’s a repeat of a pattern we’ve seen before: bold ideas, early action, and zero regard for institutional timelines.

In 2014, a group of students launched the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) to connect students exploring bitcoin and blockchain across college campuses. Within a year, BEN had grown to over 160 chapters in more than 35 countries.

What started as grassroots education quickly became a launchpad for builders.

BEN became a catalyst for its core members and for a global cohort of students who saw crypto as a blank canvas. Some dropped out. Others stayed in. Nearly all started building before the rest of the world caught on. Projects fostered by that ecosystem have gone on to collectively reach over $20 billion in peak valuations, including IOTA, Optimism, Bitso, Augur, Wanchain, Notional and Roll.

That same spirit of early action led me and Erick Pinos, former president of MIT’s Bitcoin Club, to co-found Dropout Capital, backing young, technical founders who move before the world notices.

Erick Pinos will speak at Consensus 2025 on May 16 in a panel titled “The Talent Pipeline: How to Find a Job in Crypto.”

As Pinos puts it:

“Over the past seven years we’ve met with countless student founders and at least half a dozen have become unicorns…we’re excited to give others the opportunity to be a part of funding the next generation of blockchain innovation.”

This urgency isn’t new. It’s the same drive that shaped early tech giants. Steve Jobs (Apple), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Patrick & John Collison (Stripe) all left college behind to build companies that redefined their industries.

Web3 founders are following the same path

Some of crypto’s most influential founders started the same way:

• Vitalik Buterin dropped out of the University of Waterloo to launch Ethereum (peaked at $500 billion+)

• Charles Hoskinson left the University of Colorado before founding Cardano (peaked at $70 billion)

• Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple and Stellar, dropped out of UC Berkeley (Ripple peaked at $130 billion)

• Jesse Powell left Cal State to build Kraken (valued at $10 billion)

• Shayne Coplan dropped out of NYU in his first semester to start Polymarket (estimated at $1 billion)

• Joey Krug left Pomona to co-found Augur (peaked at $1 billion)

• Jeremy Gardner, who co-founded Augur with Krug, dropped out of the University of Michigan (peaked at $1 billion)

• Jinglan Wang left Wellesley to build Eximchain and later helped lead Optimism (peaked at $11 billion+)

• Noah Tweedale, co-founder of Pump.fun, never enrolled (estimated at $1 billion+)

At Dropout Capital, we’ve backed early-stage companies including:

• Vana, founded at MIT, building a decentralized data marketplace

• SatLayer, started by MIT alumni and former VCs, creating Bitcoin-native compute for AI

• Tenderize, launched by students at Marquette University, building a liquid staking marketplace

• Algebra.Finance, founded by a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a background in mobile operating systems, rethinking on-chain prediction infrastructure

One place where these stories, and the stories of the next generation are already being shared is ChainStories, a podcast I host alongside Erick.

ChainStories takes listeners behind the scenes of some of the most successful projects in crypto, including Plume Network, YesNoError, Algebra.Finance, Virtuals.io, TON, Horizon Labs, and many others, breaking down how real companies are built from idea to launch, and helping founders and VCs understand the decisions, tradeoffs, and risks that happen long before anyone notices.

The future of crypto isn’t being theorized at conferences or slow-walked through corporate committees.

It’s being built by people who move early, take risks, and start building before the world even realizes what’s happening. And, if history is any guide, the companies that matter most won’t be the ones that waited.

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Dogecoin, XRP ETF Hopes Are Fuelling Bullish Sentiment, Social Data Shows

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Optimism for dogecoin (DOGE) and XRP based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is rising sharply with crowd sentiment shifting in favor of both tokens, social data from Santiment in a Thursday update shows.

Monitoring social commentary can be used alongside technical tools in a trading strategy, as positive chatter tends to support price rises, while negative chatter can fuel bearish trades.

Online discussions around XRP are skewed toward bulls with few bearish outlooks, despite an overall drop in social discussions for XRP compared to other majors. The perceived likelihood of a spot XRP ETF approval by the end of 2025 has risen to 85%, up from 65% just two months ago, per Polymarket.

(Santiment)

Such a boost in confidence comes despite the SEC’s recent decision to delay rulings on spot DOGE and XRP ETF proposals until June 17. Technical analysis remains bullish, showing strong accumulation patterns in the current market lull.

Online tone for Dogecoin has shifted dramatically following the April filings by 21Shares and Bitwise for DOGE spot ETFs. Until late April, DOGE was in a prolonged lull in social attention, but its social dominance has now surged to a three-month high, Santiment noted.

(Santiment)

The House of Doge and Dogecoin Foundation’s support for 21Shares’ application has added further credibility to the effort, helping DOGE shed some of its «memecoin» baggage.

“After being seen mainly as a meme or joke coin, DOGE is now viewed as a more serious investment option with potential for wider adoption,” Santiment said.

“Analysts and traders have noticed heavy accumulation by whales, with bullish patterns forming in the charts, which has added to the sense that Dogecoin may be entering a new growth phase,» it added.

Meanwhile, tokens like ether (ETH), Solana’s SOL and BNB show mixed social signals even as bitcoin staged a recovery above $97,000 early Friday.

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Bitcoin Jumps Above $97K as Traders Optimistic U.S.-China Trade Deal Possible

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Bitcoin (BTC) is trading above $97,000 during the Asian morning hours as the market breathes a sigh of relief that the U.S. and China are said to be working on a trade deal, even if the market is also skeptical that a deal will be reached this month.

(CoinDesk)

«The U.S. has proactively reached out to China through multiple channels, hoping to hold discussions on the tariff issue,» China state media posted on social media.

Dogecoin (DOGE) led gains among majors with a 4% rise in the past 24 hours. Cardano’s ADA, XRP, ether (ETH) and BNB rose between 1-3%, with the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) rising 2.2%.

Movement’s MOVE extended losses to 21% as the company confirmed founder Rushi Manche had been suspended following a CoinDesk exposé of possible token manipulation involving the 21-year-old.

On Polymarket, bettors are skeptical that a deal will come this month, giving it only a 20% chance of happening by June. Bettors are likely concerned that the hawkish rhetoric from the White House means a deal may take longer than a month to be reached.

The speed and intensity of the tariffs the White House announced earlier this year panicked the market, leading to a significant drop in BTC’s price, but with this apparent trade detente, $100,000 bitcoin is back on the agenda.

Other crypto metrics are looking healthy, market observers say, putting $100K bitcoin in sight.

«Momentum continues to build across crypto with spot flows broadening, alt activity heating up and subtle but meaningful shifts in market structure,» trading and technology group Flowdesk said in a recent market note.

«As BTC ranges above $90K, undercurrents of risk appetite are growing stronger within both spot and derivative markets. Liquidity remains strong with rising volumes, surging weekend activity, and improving altcoin depth. At the same time, broad-based spot buying continues, led by speculative alts and AI tokens, alongside $1.5B in Bitcoin ETF inflows as institutional demand grows,» Flowdesk also wrote.

The market is also likely optimistic about Strategy’s continued BTC buys, and push towards further institutionalization.

As CoinDesk recently reported, Michael Saylor announced that Strategy is raising $21 billion for more BTC buys.

In a recent note, Presto Research said investors are increasingly impressed by Strategy’s growing institutional sophistication, highlighted by new valuation frameworks like BTC Torque and a strong focus on accurately pricing its fixed-income instruments.

Kava milestone pushes AI tokens higher

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tokens are in the green on Friday as the market reacts positively to news from Kava Labs that it hit 100K users of its decentralized AI platform.

Data from CoinGecko shows the market segment is up 3%, beating the CoinDesk 20, a measure of the performance of the largest digital assets, which is up by 1.8%.

«People are turning to Kava AI because it offers two things most platforms don’t, verifiability and privacy,» Kava Labs’ Scott Stuart said to CoinDesk in an email. «That includes users who are deeply embedded in Web3 as well as those simply seeking an alternative to opaque, centralized AI systems.»

Interest in Kava and decentralized AI growing globally, Stuart said, as more users recognize the value of AI that’s both decentralized and transparent, not reliant on a black-box model governed by a handful of corporations.

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Movement Labs Suspends Rushi Manche Amid Coinbase Delisting, Token-Dumping Scandal

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Movement Labs announced today on X that it had suspended co-founder Rushi Manche.

The move to suspend Manche comes as Coinbase delisted the MOVE token, after CoinDesk reported that Movement Labs is investigating how a market maker tied to Web3Port acquired and dumped over 5% of the token’s supply, triggering a price crash.

Binance had previously banned the market maker at the center of this, Web3Port, from its platform.

The MOVE token is down about 20% on the day, according to CoinDesk market data.

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