At work, he makes one exception to the secrecy. On calls with purchasers, he usually makes use of his precise first title to introduce himself, involved that conventional enterprise executives could also be uncomfortable working with somebody recognized merely as Legend.
During the last 12 months, the enterprise capital agency Paradigm has additionally employed engineers and researchers who function anonymously; they seem on the corporate’s employees web page beneath pseudonyms. The latest rent was a crypto engineer who goes by Transmissions11 and attends highschool “in his spare time,” in response to his firm bio. (Jim Prosser, a Paradigm spokesman, mentioned the workers’ bosses knew their identities.)
In interviews, nameless crypto entrepreneurs and engineers provided a wide range of causes for concealing their names. Some feared {that a} regulatory crackdown might put them within the cross hairs of regulation enforcement. Others mentioned they disliked the eye or anxious that their rising wealth might make them targets for thieves and hackers.
The anonymous entrepreneurs usually take excessive steps to maintain their identities personal, utilizing voice-altering software program on calls or requiring enterprise companions to signal nondisclosure agreements.
Some enterprise corporations are prepared to spend money on them anyway. Final 12 months, 0xMaki, a developer who helped run the outstanding crypto challenge SushiSwap, raised $60 million from a gaggle of enterprise buyers, together with Ms. Wu, with out disclosing his actual title to them. (The deal fell by means of after members of SushiSwap — a so-called decentralized autonomous group, or DAO, by which particular person buyers maintain vital sway — raised issues in regards to the funding.)
A Information to Cryptocurrency
A glossary. Cryptocurrencies have gone from a curiosity to a viable funding, making them virtually unattainable to disregard. If you’re combating the terminology, allow us to assist:
Final summer season, the nameless founding father of Alchemix, one other main crypto challenge, raised $4.9 million from a gaggle of enterprise corporations led by CMS Holdings. Dan Matuszewski, a founding father of CMS, mentioned he by no means requested the challenge’s chief, who makes use of the pseudonym Scoopy Trooples, to disclose his identification.
“Loads of these guys have reputations from over time,” Mr. Matuszewski mentioned. “It doesn’t look like it makes a ton of sense for them to run off and abscond with the funds.”