By Alex Brown
February 7, 2022
CryptoMondays NYC Highlights Featuring David Gan, Cryptocurrency Luminary and Founder of OP Crypto
By Alex Brown
We had another great CryptoMondays NYC on February 7th, featuring a fireside chat with David Gan, Founder of OP Crypto and an all-around cryptocurrency expert. David shared his incredible background, which includes being a critical member of the team that built Asian crypto exchange Huobi and launching OP Crypto, a venture capital fund that invests in the most promising blockchain entrepreneurs.
David Gan’s Incredible Background Led to Prominence in the Crypto Industry.
Growing up in China, David developed skills that led him to be one of the most successful crypto investors in the world. As a young man, David was a professional gamer, poker player, retail investor, and investment banker. Later, as the digital currency space started to take-off, David focused on investing in ICO’s and Bitcoins. David was also a key member in building Huobi, Asia’s pre-eminent crypto exchange. His diverse background coupled with his deep understanding of the crypto markets enabled him to launch his own fund OP Crypto.
Incredibly, David was recognized in 2019 by Forbes for inclusion in the 30 under 30 club in Asia.
Building China’s Major Exchange Huobi Global
David was instrumental in helping to build Huobi Global, the leading Asian crypto exchange, which is often compared to Coinbase. David was critical in helping Huobi become a lead incubator of early stage blockchain companies as well as launching its principal investing platform.
As wild as the evolution of the crypto market has been in the United States, China has always been considered the wild west of the digital currency world. David used ingenuity to navigate the Asian market and ever-changing rules and regulations to create a more vibrant Asian trading market with an influx of foreign investors and the ability for Asian investors to access investments worldwide. Huobi Global has since grown to over 30 million users.
More and More Capital is Being Invested in Blockchain Web 3 Companies
In 2021, David decided to launch a crypto venture capital fund. OP Crypto’s (OP = opportunistic) mission is to invest in projects that it believes will help shape the future of corporate governance including the transfer power from centralized entities to content creators in the upcoming Web 3.0 ecosystem.
Over the coming years, OP Crypto expects to see developers and investors continue to build on-chain towards a more decentralized world. David imagines a world where lean DApp teams can build initial infrastructure and create well-designed incentive structures to properly motivate other stakeholders to build upon and contribute to the ecosystem in a virtuous cycle. OP Crypto hopes to capitalize on these trends by investing in best-in-class middleware solutions and platforms that will ultimately allow for transferability of data cross-chain and high levels of scalability on-chain.
OP Crypto is focused on filling voids and providing operational support, full transparency, and compelling opportunities to its businesses and customers.
Investment Lessons from David Gan
1. The best way to learn is when you have “skin in the game.”
2. Focus on investments that are opportunistic, operationally strong, open, and transparent.
3. When pursuing an investment opportunity, focus on the addressable market for the company’s products.
4. Web 3 enables those that are pursuing altruistic goals to co-exist within a business environment motivated by profit.
5. Web 3 will enable much more flexibility in choosing a career, how you spend your day, utilizing your talents to do multiple different things with the ability to be compensated for your contributions.
