
Alex Svanevik, founder of onchain analytics firm Nansen, predicts that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ billionaire minimum tax could “tank markets” via asset selloffs but tips a $100,000 Bitcoin price if Republican candidate Donald Trump wins.
Speaking to Hall of Flame about his journey into crypto and rise to prominence on social media, Svanevik says he was skeptical of Bitcoin when he first encountered it. If it weren’t for a random lunch break at work one day, he might never have changed his mind — and Nansen might’ve never existed.
“I first looked at Bitcoin in 2013, and I dismissed it. I thought it was only for money laundering criminals, like everyone else,” Singapore-based Svanevik says.
“Then, in 2017, Ethereum popped up on my radar while I was at lunch at work, and some engineers were talking about it. Some folks were also investing in ICOs,” he explains.
That day changed everything for Svanevik. He was working as a data science manager and quickly fell “down the rabbit hole with Ethereum.” Living in Barcelona at the time, he packed up and moved to Hong Kong for a new job at a crypto startup.
But as was par for the course in 2017: “That startup collapsed within 11 months, and they had to lay off everyone,” he explains.
The redundancy was the push that kicked off Nansen. Svanevik spotted the opportunity and “took some of the best people” from the company to help start Nansen, which has now become one of the world’s most powerful multichain analytics platforms.
Two others became co-founders in 2019: data engineer Lars Bakke Krogvig, who got laid off from the same bankrupt company, and solutions architect Evgeny Medvedev.
They bootstrapped Nansen together, launched in April 2020, and raised a seed round of funding in just six months.
(X/Alex Svanevik)
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