FLORI MARQUEZ’s rise seemed unstoppable in 2021, known as the founder of a multi-billion dollar crypto business and a name on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list.
But fast forward a year and her company, BlockFi, is bankrupt and her reputation badly hit.
But what is the story behind the rise and fall of the BlockFi founder and what is her net worth?
Who is Flori Marquez?
Flori Marquez was born on December 7, 1991 in Miami, Florida, and grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.
While a US citizen herself, both her parents were originally from Argentina. They made the move to America in the 1980s due to the economic turmoil in their home country.
While Marquez has lived in the US her whole life, her heritage continues to be a large part of her identity with her grandparents and cousins still based in South America. School holidays when she was growing up were regularly spent going back and forth to Buenos Aires to visit loved ones.
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Her close connection to Argentina eventually played an important part of her decision to get involved in cryptocurrency.
Like many who have ended up working in blockchain, Marquez first studied higher education, graduating from Cornell University in 2013 before then taking on a career in finance.
She worked as an analyst at Oak Hill Advisors between 2013 and 2015 and then as a portfolio manager for a banking start-up called Bond Street until 2017.
It was while working at her second firm that the budding entrepreneur was first introduced to Bitcoin.
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“My roommate’s boyfriend, who was obsessed with Reddit, kept talking about it none stop at every single party we were at,” she joked recently in a media interview.
“I have to admit that the first time I heard about it I kind of tuned it out.
“But the second time I heard about it was from an engineer that worked at Bond Street – Steve- and he actually did a presentation for us where he explained the difference between centralisation and decentralised platforms.”
Marquez was inspired by the potential of crypto and blockchain technology.
With inflation at a 40-year high in the US and prices skyrocketing in Argentina, Marquez saw crypto as a way of helping individuals invest their money and protect their savings.
Still working at Bond Street, she started going about setting up her own firm with her friend and business partner, Zac Prince.
The pair founded BlockFi with the aim of being a lending service in the cryptocurrency market.
Marquez worked for Bond Street during the day and dedicated her weekends and evenings to BlockFi.
She told a podcast last year: “I’m a little bit of a crazy person so I decided ‘okay, what if I worked on this business at night?'”
The crypto finance leader added: “Working more than one job is really stressful because the other job doesn’t respect the stress of the first job.”
In the four years following the launch of BlockFi, the company grew to be a team of 850 employees with offices in the US, Argentina, Poland, the UK, and Singapore.
It has also expanded its offering to customers, introducing loans of US dollars backed by cryptocurrencies, crypto credit cards, and blockchain trading.
BlockFi received hundreds of millions in investment from venture capitalists and in 2021 had a valuation of $3billion.
However, in July 2021 things started to turn soar for Marquez and Prince. The US’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the firm of making sales of an “unregistered security”.
BlockFi settled with the SEC for $100million in February 2022n and registered with the regulator, but not before its market valuation was badly hit. The crypto firm saw its value collapse by two thirds to just $1billion.
To make things worse, in the months that followed a number of BlockFi’s clients who had been given huge loans went bankrupt, leaving the company short of money.
With fears for its future, BlockFi took a $400million line of credit from the now notorious crypto exchange FTX. But in November 2022 when FTX collapsed, Marquez’s firm was also forced into bankruptcy.
What is Flori Marquez’s net worth?
Earlier this year, Flori Marquez was thought to have a net worth of $500million.
But the collapse of BlockFi in November has badly impacted her wealth. It is now estimated the crypto entrepreneur has a net worth of $100million.
Does Flori Marquez have a husband?
Flori Marquez is not married with little information known about whether she is dating.