This investor is the architect of the cryptoverse

Jason Fernandes never wanted to be an investor, and he fell into it. “I never thought I would do this,” he laughs. The unlikely 38-year-old investor has amassed quite the record, with strategic investments and advisory relationships with 18 crypto companies, many of which have had successful launches and are now multi-million dollar projects. Fernandes has spent years evaluating investments in the Defi, NFT and Metaverse industry, and has built up a pretty formidable portfolio of international companies that he advises or has invested in.

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Fernandes has been busy. Just this quarter, he announced he had joined the board of advisors at New York-based Omnia Markets LLC. (an AI/ML cryptocurrency analytics platform), also Miami-based NFT music marketplace GrooveUp.com, and REV3AL (one-of-a-kind digital copyright protection and anti-counterfeiting technology gender). REV3AL launched on KuCoin in the last week of June, selling out its scorching airdrop in 2.3 seconds. Finally, French streaming company OTA EarnTV this month announced its advisory relationship with Fernandes’ launch pad, AdLunam.

Fernandes began speaking regularly about the cryptocurrency markets in 2019 as a frequent guest and crypto analyst on Malta’s 24-hour blockchain channel BloxLive.TV. He has been featured in over 100 episodes of their new on the block and Crypto now series, where Fernandes proselytized blockchain and dissected the crypto markets.

Crypto Investing became his primary focus in 2021, with his appointment as CBO of NFT Tech (NEO: NFT | Frankfurt: 8LO | OTC Pink: NFTFF), a publicly traded holding company with significant crypto assets. change. While at NFT technologies and listening to hundreds of pitches, Fernandes honed his skills as an early stage investor. When asked what his investment strategy is, he simply replies, “It’s about the utility of tokens. Investing in cryptocurrency works very differently from the world of stocks, in that you can have a big company and have a poorly performing token.” He continues, “Since we are specifically investing in the token, you really need to study the factors that would cause the scarcity and how the different parts of the ecosystem fit together.

“Scarcity always influences price, and without a strong symbolic structure, a project is doomed,” he added. He would know that Fernandes is quoted extensively in international publications such as CoinTelegraph, Bitcoin.com, etc. for his deep expertise in the esoteric subject of “tokenomics”, for which he is considered one of the world’s foremost experts, sometimes referred to by other industry veterans as the “Michael Jordan of Tokenomics”. Advising dozens of blockchain/crypto projects over the past decade has honed his ability to develop optimal working models for crypto projects and guide them to their public IDO or IEO (a process similar to a company going public via an IPO on traditional markets).

More recently, he made headlines for his latest AdLunam project, the industry’s first NFT (non-fungible token) embedded crypto-launchpad. The company (which he co-founded alongside Nadja Bester and Lawrence Hutson) has facilitated investment in the Web3 space and has itself been valued at over $22 million by institutional investors who have injected $2 million dollars in business in just five days. The company’s innovative solution focuses solely on small retail investors and building communities that champion projects, rewarding investors for being “good performers” through its Engage to win and proof of attention models.

Business seems to come naturally Fernandes. He started his first company ZeoCities.com almost two and a half decades ago when he was still a teenager. The company earned Fernandes one of his first television appearances on MTV’s “Web Watch”. By age 15, Fernandes had built a site that already had its own free email service, search engine and e-commerce store with a user base that rivaled that of giants like InfoSpace. The presenter, VJ Cyrus Sahukar, wanted to know where he found the time. The interview revealed that 1998 had been a productive year for Fernandes. The teenager wrote for India’s best-selling computer magazine, CHIP, and had just founded LDKids (Learning Disabled Kids), a non-profit organization that would soon earn him the prestigious Childnet International Award and backing from the British telecommunications giant. Cable and Wireless.

While a student at the University of Texas, Fernandes co-founded web streaming platform RecordTV, securing a patent for the technology. RecordTV then fought (and won) a groundbreaking copyright case against Singapore’s national broadcaster MediaCorp, which settled the US$29 million lawsuit for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the millions.

Back in India and looking for new horizons in 2012, he discovered Bitcoin. “I understood right away that we were witnessing the evolution of finance and that the world would never be the same again,” says Fernandes with palpable passion. That’s when he dove headfirst into the Cryptoverse. Fernandes quickly became one of India’s earliest cryptocurrency evangelizers, writing extensively about it in various publications in early 2013, before the launch of India’s first cryptocurrency exchange and at a time when Bitcoin cost no more. than 13 usd.

Asked about his future plans, Fernandes is keen to talk about Socialioi.com, a company in which he recently acquired a 100% stake from West Bengal-based Binjara IT. “I can make it part of AdLunam, or maybe make it my own crypto token,” and “I’m very hopeful for Crypto’s ability to change the world.” He says. Interestingly, in 2019, for his contribution to social/financial inclusion, Fernandes received the prestigious Karmaveer Chakra award. Established by the UN and iCONGO, the prize is awarded for “unrelenting courage”. Other laureates include former President Dr. APJ Kalam, Dr. Verghese Kurein and actors Anupam Kher and Kajol. It’s a list in which Fernandes seems determined to earn his place.

Note: Investing in cryptocurrency and crypto assets is subject to financial risk and readers should do their own due diligence. Entrepreneur Media does not endorse any such investment.