Rahul Rai
- "Crypto is just getting started, and is in its rocketship growth phase," crypto fund manager Rahul Rai told Insider.
- 24-year-old Rai became a millionaire when he sold the fund he'd co-founded to BlockTower Capital.
- Bitcoin has shot above $50,000 this week and now has a market value of over $1 trillion.
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Rahul Rai, a 24-year-old millionaire crypto hedge fund founder, believes bitcoin is accelerating at a rate that is out of this world.
Rai – the co-head of Market Neutral at BlockTower Capital, which runs the BlockTower Gamma Point Market Neutral Fund – said he believes crypto will upend the entire traditional financial system.
"Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are the underpinnings of a new financial infrastructure, and are going to reshape massive sectors of the global economy," Rai told Insider in a recent interview.
"Crypto is just getting started, and is in its rocketship growth phase," Rai said.
Cryptocurrencies are not the only ones to have accelerated in this space. Roughly half of the world's central banks are at some stage of developing their own digital currencies, for example.
The assets locked on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, such as non-fungible tokens, have soared in popularity. The market is worth around $100 billion and counting as everyone from celebrities, to artists and sports stars have raced to endorse and issue these unique digital collectors' items.
"It's absolutely mind-boggling. And as much as I wish I could say that I had the foresight, there's no way that I could've imagined how rapidly this entire ecosystem would accelerate," he said.
Rai, who worked at Morgan Stanley on its foreign-exchange hedge funds team, set up his own crypto hedge fund in January this year with Sanat Rao and Eash Aggarwal. Five months later, Gamma Point Capital was sold to digital asset manager BlockTower Capital for $35 million.
With bitcoin's return to above $50,000 this week, it recaptured a market value of $1 trillion for the first time in months. Rai believes this is just the start of a bigger rally - not just for bitcoin, but for cryptocurrencies and digital assets more widely.
Bitcoin has risen 442% over the past 12 months, and it isn't the only coin whose value has shot up over that time frame. Ether is up 986%, dogecoin has surged 3,022%, and solana's sol has climbed 2,351%.
Rai said the growth in the ecosystem has been a big part of his own success.
"Being in a hyper-growth industry makes it much easier to build and scale rapidly," he said.
"I have been incredibly fortunate to work in a field that I love, with brilliant teammates, and there's nothing else I want to be doing with my time," he added.