Poker player Sean Lippel has hit the jackpot in the financial world after announcing a DeFi crypto fund worth a whopping $50 Million! The WSOP Circuit Ring winner moved into crypto in the early days and is now putting that knowledge to work along with skills learned during his time at Credit Suisse.
Sean Lippel to Head $50 Million Fund
Sean Lippel was one of the first poker players to apply data analytics to poker when part of a study group during the poker boom. Forbes magazine writes that he wondered just where his life could go with the right opportunity “to apply his talent for weighing risks and identifying opportunities from limited information.”
After graduating, a spell at investment bank Credit Suisse was the move that would dictate the future direction of his life, and poker would, sadly, be missing out on an incredible talent.
Later he would become a partner at FinTech Collective, a company dedicated to holding financial technology investments and a balance sheet past the $500 million mark.
Why Is Sean Lippel Moving into DeFi?
Decentralized finance (DeFi) can be very loosely described as moving the world of complex financial instruments into the crypto/blockchain space. Think of the world of investment banking duplicating itself and arriving in the world of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The financial sharks have spotted a new high risk, big reward area and the likes of Sean Lippel are committing to being the pathfinders in this new area with potentially massive returns on the table.
The last year has seen investments in this sector grow more than 1,000%, creating new capital of $80 billion.
Has Poker Missed Out or Can Sean Lippel Help the Industry in another Way?
With a clear appetite for risk, poker fans have seriously missed out. Sean Lippel would easily have grown into a world-class poker player capable of entertaining fans on TV poker shows.
But as it turns out, could there be a possibility this his chosen direction might ultimately help online poker even more? Crypto Poker is doing well, but it hasn’t yet pulled the world player pool back together.
The DeFi space will eventually help to normalise cryptocurrency transactions by helping people who are traditionally shunned by banks.
“DeFi started serving people who were traditionally underserved”
Sean Lippel says:
“DeFi started serving people who were traditionally underserved, that banks don’t care about, or people who have made a lot of money in crypto—neither of which banks are interested in servicing correctly,”
The wheels are in motion for Bitcoin poker sites to become mainstream, allowing players from all jurisdictions to sign up and play together just like before Black Friday.
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