When the Crypto Founder Is Real but the Name Is Fake
Owl of Moistness. Psykeeper. Crypto entrepreneurs love hiding their identities behind pseudonyms, while Silicon Valley venture capitalists are learning to live with them. Will the fake identities lead to less bias in investing or conceal checkered pasts?
Last year, Nader Al-Naji, founder of a crypto startup called BitClout, began using a pseudonym online—Diamondhands—to mask his true identity. In fact, he was so determined to conceal his real name that he bought a $500 piece of hardware to manipulate his voice so no one would recognize him during podcast and press interviews.
Al-Naji’s cloak-and-dagger routine was part of a curious tradition taking shape among a cohort of crypto entrepreneurs. By using a pseudonym, Al-Naji believed he would attract more developers to build software on top of Deso, the blockchain his startup is building for running decentralized social networks. He thought the gesture would make his startup seem less corporate, even though it had successfully sold tens of millions of dollars worth of tokens to investors including Andressen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. And it offered a nod to crypto’s most revered figure: Satoshi Nakomoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor.
“It makes people feel like this project can be owned by them now, not by a CEO or a board,” Al-Naji said.