Erik Finman, the teen who made his millions betting on bitcoin as a 12-year-old, appears to be launching a “competitor” to Facebook’s Libra project.
Finman, who bills himself as “TIME’s most influential teen,” has been reaching out to high-profile Crypto Twitter pundits to elicit signups for a “huge referral program,” and claims that the Wall Street Journal and Forbes are covering the blessed event, according to a screenshot of Finman’s (presumably boilerplate) message shared with Decrypt.
Yesterday, Finman reportedly invested in MetalPay, a peer-to-peer payments startup that he believes will “beat bitcoin.”
Finman’s (brief) career began in 2011, when the then-12-year-old convinced his parents to let him skip college if he could transform $1,000 in cash into a cool $1 million, according to Investopedia. He ended up investing in Bitcoin when it was $12 per coin; later he also made investments in Ether.
But even for TIME’s most influential teen, competing with Libra might be a longshot. Facebook has corralled a vast supporting cast of tech and finance giants to support its project, which involves issuing a digital currency from a Swiss bank account, to the chagrin of regulators.
We look forward to Finman’s inevitable appearance before Congress.