Tech entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan is most known as Coinbase’s former CTO but recently he’s thrust himself into the spotlight. Balaji has made a bold $2 million bet that Bitcoin will hit $1 million within 90 days! He believes the US banking sector will collapse from all the money printing. As of 2023, Balaji Srinivasan has an estimated net worth of $150 million. Balaji made his fortune from selling three businesses he started – Teleport, Earn.com and Counsyl.
Early Life
Balaji Srinivasan was born on May 24, 1980 and is of Indian descent. As a bright student, he studied electrical engineering at Stanford University. Srinivasan got a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. from the same institution.
In 2006, the Long Island native began working on his first business venture, Counsyl. It was a genetic testing startup that launched in 2007 and focused on making test materials for Mendelian illnesses.
Rise to Prominence
In 2013, Balaji got into angel investing and became a general partner at the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. In the same year, he co-founded a Bitcoin mining company called 21 Inc which raised around $120 million from investors.
The Bitcoin mining business failed and the company pivoted to Earn.com, a platform that pays users with crypto for responding to emails. Srinivasan also started Teleport in 2014, a job search engine that was acquired by Topia for an undisclosed amount.
The following year, Coinbase bought Earn.com for an estimated $100 million and as a result he became their CTO. Later that year, Counsyl was sold to Myriad Genetics for $375 million in cash and equity!
Crypto Influence
Srinivasan left Coinbase in 2019, but his impact on the crypto community didn’t end there. In 2020, he uttered several projections about the pandemic’s effect on the economy, and many of them came true.
In 2022, he published The Network State, a book about establishing decentralized societies. It went on to become a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and Balaji continued to rise in popularity. He made guest appearances on finance podcasts, where he made more predictions.
His most ambitious claim yet has generated a lot of publicity on Twitter. When Bitcoin’s price rebounded from the low $20,000’s, he tweeted that the digital currency could reach $1 million in 90 days. He is willing to bet $2 million on the outcome, this sum represents around 1.33% of his net worth.
Although the prediction has attracted a lot of criticism, it appears Balaji is mainly doing so to highlight how fragile the US banking system has become. If the Federal Reserve decides to bail out the US banks through money printing, the US dollar could hyperinflate.
Net Worth and Earnings
Balaji Srinivasan’s resume is nothing short of remarkable. Founding three successful companies in the tech and health sectors is an impressive achievement. Selling two of them to large corporations for $475 million shows he’s a smooth operator.
