GARRY TAN may not be a major name in the crypto sphere, but his investment in Coinbase helped get the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world up and running.
But what is the story behind the crypto investor? And what is his net worth?
Who is Garry Tan?
Garry Tan was born on March 21, 1981 in Fremont, California to Singaporean immigrants.
He became used to moving around a lot as a child, with his dad in and out of work as he battled addiction.
“My dad was kind of a raging alcoholic his entire life,” he said in an interview in 2021, opening up about his father’s experiences for the first time.
“The hard part is, we move eight or nine times. It’s funny, because it probably gave me a lot of skills, which was just being able to make friends very easily. These things that almost break you also make you.”
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Tan said the addiction meant his family had little income and “most of the money would go on rent and beer”.
He said: “I’m just so grateful for everything I have in my life now, and I never thought I would have any of that because we didn’t have money for food sometimes growing up and that’s because my dad couldn’t keep his job.”
Tan’s interest in computers first began when he was 14-years-old and he started to learn to program.
Making the interest an academic endeavour, he went on to study Computer Systems Engineering at Stanford University from 1999 to 2003.
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Upon graduating he worked at Microsoft and then for data analytics start-up Palantir Technologies.
But it was in 2008 that he decided to go ahead and do his own thing.
Tan teamed up with Brett Gibson to set up a blogging platform called Posterous which allowed users to write blogs that automatically post to Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook simultaneously.
Posterous was acquired by Twitter in 2012 for $20million.
Months before the purchase, Tan joined Y Combinator, which provides funding for early-stage start-ups and helps develop their pitch to investors.
At Y Combinator Tan helped to give cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase the leg-up it needed to get off the ground and Tan himself became a major investor in the company.
“I feel like now I have the golden ticket,” Tan said in 2021 about his decision to invest.
“What I’m excited about is how we build the next big platform and have that actually mean something.”
As interest in Bitcoin grew, Tan kept putting more and more money into Coinbase via his investment firm Initialized, giving him a large stake in the company.
It has now made back more than 400 per cent of its initial $600,000 investment.
Who is Garry Tan’s wife? Does Garry Tan have a family?
Garry Tan is married to a marketing consultant called Stephanie Lim.
Together they have had two children.
What is Garry Tan’s net worth?
Garry Tan is estimated Mohave a net worth of $750million.
Until recently he looked on track to becoming a billionaire. However, the crypto crash of May 2022 led to some of his assets decreasing in value.