“The tourists have left, just like they have in every previous bear market. Excited to see them rushing back at the next ATH.”
A self-described nerd, Hany Rashwan is probably one of the most underrated proponents in the crypto world, believing in the use of technology to help make planet earth a more equitable, efficient and prosperous place for all. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Rashwan has been enthused with cryptography and computers since an early age.
Having created his first gaming site at the age of 14, Rashwan has been moving from one big idea to another, including founding payment tech firms such as Ribbon and Payout before making a splash in the crypto world. He co-founded 21Shares in July 2018 with the aim of simplifying investing in cryptocurrency assets and co-founded Amun DeFi in January 2020 to launch low-fee index tokens that provide an intuitive alternative to investing in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
Rashwan is known for his perseverance and zeal, counting among his supporters the likes of Tim Draper, Wavemaker Partners, Valor Equity Partners and ETFS Capital. With a steely determination and an unwavering entrepreneurial spirit, Rashwan has carved out a niche for himself in a world that isn’t too kind to realists.
Rashwan launched the world’s cheapest physical Bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) on the SIX Swiss Exchange in the first month of 2022, which was designed to help crypto investors weather the bear market. Following it up with Aave, Chainlink and Uniswap crypto ETPs in February 2022, Rashwan accelerated his firm’s nonfungible token push with a crypto ETP that tracked Decentraland’s MANA token. Subsequently, he expanded 21Shares’ entry in the metaverse space by launching an ETP of The Sandbox in April 2022 that tracked the performance of the native SAND token of the community-driven gaming platform, offering crypto investors exposure to the new-age internet space.
Only a month later, 21Shares gave Australian investors a more stable option to invest in Bitcoin and Ether with its exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that were listed on Cboe Australia, offering them superior investment products that had fewer tracking errors than futures-based funds. As a result of all tireless pursuits, Rashwan secured a $25-million funding round for 21.co in September 2022, valuing 21Shares’ holding company at approximately $2 billion.
With 2022 being a downhill ride for many fragile crypto firms, Rashwan believes that the cryptocurrency market will continue to oscillate in the risk-off environment, although he still remains quite bullish on the future prospects of the exciting cryptocurrency space. He reinforced the strong underlying operational fundamentals of 21Shares and is geared toward further expanding its range of ETF products.
Despite the series of bankruptcy events that roiled cryptocurrency markets in the latter half of 2022, Rashwan is convinced that the crypto industry has earned the trust bestowed upon it by millions of investors across the globe. He remains optimistic about a positive reversal in investor sentiment in 2023 and is gearing up to scale his ventures even further, especially Amun DeFi, which aims to provide its users access to next-generation blockchain ecosystems that are hosting the DeFi sector.
