Ophelia Snyder, a 29-year-old crypto tycoon dedicated her early twenties to making marine biology shows on Discovery Channel. At present, she manages US$2.5 billion ($3.6 billion) in a powerful financial sector. Because of Switzerland’s crypto-friendly regulatory framework and cheap corporation taxes Snyder established 21Shares and led the crypto world by storm.
Snyder’s company, 21Shares, is located in Zug, Switzerland’s Crypto Valley, and provides European investors with Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds and tokens known exclusively to crypto enthusiasts, such as Polkadot and Avalanche.
29-year-Old Crypto Tycoon Is Planning To Expand Her Firm Into The United States
She is currently collaborating with another crypto enthusiast, Cathie Wood, to develop a Bitcoin ETF in the United States. Snyder has even planned to start a branch in New York to spread throughout the country.
Her theory is straightforward: cryptocurrency investment is sweeping the globe, but purchasing and selling the coins may be a bewildering procedure for investors in the United States. Still, as well all know, cryptocurrencies are used for several reasons other than paying for goods and services.
Cryptocurrencies are digital tokens that are tangible goods. Legal people can use them to make payments in most jurisdictions. Cryptocurrencies are items having inherent worth and being a means of trade. They are commonly employed in blockchain technology because of their potential.
“We really want to make people feel confident when they enter the space,” she said. “That’s the whole game for us – lowering the barriers to entry and making people feel excited about what we feel is a revolutionary technology.”
Ophelia Snyder
Ophelia Snyder Help Investors To Enter The Crypto Space
She co-founded Amun, a sister firm that sells tokens and indices to more sophisticated investors. Amun and 21Shares’ assets have risen to $US2.5 billion in three years, and the company now employs over 100 people.
Graham Tuckwell, chairman of ETFS Capital and an ETF pioneer in Australia, Adam Draper, creator of Boost VC Accelerator and son of famed venture capitalist Tim Draper, and Ark Investment Management’s Wood, are among the early supporters.
Wood and Snyder became friends after meeting at a conference and discovering they had a passion for cryptocurrency. Wood is a member of Amun’s board of directors and has made a personal investment.
Last year, the market value of around 12,000 tokens tracked by CoinGecko increased by $US1.5 trillion to almost $US2.3 trillion. The 21Shares website prominently boasts that “Bitcoin is up 27.78%, Ethereum is up 232.78%, and the S&P 500 index is up 18.32% since the beginning of 2021.”
Such figures have both startups and conventional Wall Street corporations rushing to develop new products that will attract even more investors into the crypto frontier.
21Shares attempts to lessen some risks by acquiring the real coins that underpin its assets and keeping them in an offline wallet known as cold storage. This raises the cost of operating a fund, resulting in high yearly fees that cut into returns.
These at 21Shares range between 1.49 and 2.5 per cent or between $US14.90 and $US25 for every $US1000 invested; significantly more than the 0.5 per cent average cost of passively managed equity ETFs.
Reasons Behind The Growth Of This 29-year-Old Crypto Tycoon & 21Shares
Switzerland’s crypto-friendly regulatory framework, particularly in Zug, where 21Shares is situated. Because of its cheap corporation taxes and favourable attitude toward blockchain technology, the enclave known as Crypto Valley is home to hedge funds, commodity traders; and now crypto firms. According to the city, citizens can even pay their taxes in Bitcoin and Ether.
Snyder co-founded Amun and 21Shares with Egyptian-American entrepreneur Hany Rashwan. They met in San Francisco while she was a college student; and he was launching startups centred on e-commerce and digital payments.
In 2018, the two founded Amun, named after an Egyptian God, first combining Bitcoin; Ethereum, and other popular currencies into a single fund that investors could watch and list on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zurich. Different baskets tracking the performance of newer coins shortly followed.
They quickly launched a line of ETFs called 21Shares, referencing Bitcoin’s supply limit of 21 million units. 21Shares currently has 23 cryptos ETFs available on 10 European markets.
Who is Ophelia Snyder?
Snyder, an Italian-American, was raised in both New York and Rome. Because of her family’s travels and her time at Choate Rosemary Hall; a boarding school in Connecticut with students from all over the world, she spent most of her youth immersed in diverse cultures.
Her mother is a painter and photographer. Her father worked at Biocraft Laboratories, a pioneering generic medication manufacturer founded by her grandparents and sold to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in 1996 for $US296 million.
Snyder began her career in research laboratories after graduating from Stanford University with a degree in earth systems. She then made marine biology shows for the Discovery Channel.
She was more interested in finance because it was “at the core of how we might change the world for the better,” whether climate change, women’s rights; or education. So she moved on to venture capital, then asset management, which brought her to cryptocurrency.
What Impact Did Cryptocurrency Have on Ophelia Snyder’s Life?
Snyder stated that if customers want it or in-house experts believe it has promise, she will develop a fund centred on a new coin.
According to Nate Geraci, president of the ETF Store, an investment consultant; the 21Shares funds that attempt to monitor the price of tokens on blockchains like Ripple and Cardano have lesser liquidity and a smaller market cap than more conventional currencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
“This is my life. This is the thing I think is going to change the entire world.”
Ophelia Snyder
She and Wood had planned to construct a Bitcoin futures ETF but withdrew their application in December owing to these issues.
Snyder stated that she has “an enormous amount” of her money in crypto, including the goods of her firms. On a percentage level, it’s significantly more than she would advise her clients to invest in cryptocurrency.
