PANTERA Capital has emerged as one of the leading alternative hedge funds focusing on cryptocurrencies with founder Dan Morehead making his millions after being a pioneer in the crypto trading space.
But what is the story behind Dan Morehead’s success and what is his net worth?
Who is Dan Morehead?
Dan Morehead was born in California in the US in 1965 and while he would go on to become the founder of one of the leading crypto hedge funds, at an early age finance was a far cry from what he wanted to do in life.
“I wanted to be a structural engineer to design bridges and buildings,” he recently disclosed in a media interview.
“My grandfather had designed the suspension part of the Bay Bridge and I wanted to be just like him, so that’s what I studied in college.
“But I needed to take some liberal arts to qualify for my degree so I took econ classes as kind of my hobby.
Sign up to get our weekly cryptocurrency, NFT and metaverse news round-ups direct to your inbox
“When I got out of college, I was still planning to go to grad school in structural engineering but deferred that for a year or two so I could go work on Wall Street and start out as a bond trader.”
After graduating from Princeton University in 1987, Morehead joined Goldman Sachs as a mortgage derivatives trader. He quickly gained a reputation as a skilled trader and was soon promoted to co-head of the mortgage trading desk.
For all his love of structural engineering, he never went back. Following his time at Goldman Sachs, he held roles at a number of other financial firms, including at the Bankers Trust in 1989 and moving to London to take up the role of worldwide head of FX options at Deutsche Bank in 1995.
Morehead then co-founded and held the position of CEO at the electronic foreign exchange platform, Atriax in the year 2000.
READ MORE ON 24/7 CRYPTO HERE
Backed by big names such as Citibank, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Reuters, Atriax was set up to help facilitate electronic trading of foreign exchange between banks and clients as the internet age started to take off.
Despite much hype in the financial press, in 2002, the portal shut down.
One source close to the company told Financial News at the time: “Atriax’s problem was that it was dogged by poor technology from the start. Only four entities had managed to connect to the system by the time it closed.
“Its three banking founders, Deutsche Bank, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase had connected up to the platform, but it was a slow process, and Royal Bank of Canada, which is committed to connecting up to electronic trading initiatives had also made a connection, but these were not simple to do.”
Just one year later in 2003, Morehead set up the Pantera Capital investment firm which has made his name.
Pantera initially started out just like any other hedge fund management firm but in march 2014 decided to focus exclusively on Bitcoin, and other digital currencies.
Morehead was originally introduced to Bitcoin by his brother in 2011 but it wasn’t until 2013 that he decided cryptocurrency was a workable idea that was worth investing in.
“The reason it to be involved in is it’s just gonna disrupt so many different things,” he said earlier this year when explaining his thinking behind investing in Bitcoin.
“Over the decades, there’s been things like Russian privatisation or Argentine farmland or Tesla Motors or whatever and those things are all political trades really interesting.
“But they’re just specific to that one region, you know, one asset class or whatever.
“The coin blockchain, you’re going to change so many different things, literally for billions of people, and it’s borderless. It operates in any country.”
Since 2013, Pantera’s Bitcoin Fund has given $6billion dollars worth of returns to investors after seeing the fund explode by more than 65,000 percent.
In addition to his crypto investments with Pantera Capital, Morehead is a co-founder of the Bitstamp exchange and he has served as a member of the board of directors of Block.one, the company behind the EOS blockchain.
In 2017, he was also an early investor in Coinbase, one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets.
What is Dan Morehead’s net worth?
In 2022 Dan Morehead is thought to have amassed a personal net worth of $500million.
Morehead has made considerable money throughout his career and is likely to have hit the million-dollar mark years before starting Pantera capital.
READ MORE: The story behind Barry Silbert: What is the Digital Currency Group founder’s net worth?
READ MORE: The story behind Hayden Adams: What is the Uniswap founder’s net worth?
Follow 24/7 Crypto on Twitter for the latest news and developments as they happen