William Quigley, Co-Founder of Tether and WAX, on Founding Companies, Crypto Investing, and more.
William E. Quigley is a cryptocurrency and blockchain investor. He has incubated and invested in more than 30 bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency-related investments and co-developed the first crypto derivative used to trade pre-release Ethereum. He co-founded Tether, the first fiat-backed stablecoin and most traded cryptocurrency to date, GoCoin, a pioneering crypto payments processor, and co-founded WAX, a leading NFT blockchain platform. In 2013, William co-founded Crypto Currency Partners, a blockchain equity investment fund with early notable investments in Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfury, Authy, ChangeTip, and Circle.
Before his involvement in blockchain, William was a venture capitalist, co-founding Clearstone Venture Partners, a $700M early-stage focused venture capital firm where he concentrated on communications and consumer technology companies. Before Clearstone, he was a managing director at idealab! Capital Partners (ICP), the world’s first consumer Internet venture capital firm. ICP was an early investor in some of the leading Web 1.0 era companies, including Paypal, Netzero, MP3.com, and Goto.com, one of the first companies to rank search results based on a bidding process.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- William’s crypto inception story
- CBDCs
- Companies launching a new start path to cryptocurrency and blockchain programs
- The future of crypto regulation and the SEC involvement
- The current landscape of the cryptocurrency market
- The future of Stablecoin's impact on global commerce and financial developments
- The spread and use of blockchain technology across other industries, such as Visa’s backing of the first-ever bitcoin rewards card, and why we’ll see similar moves in retail, telecommunications, healthcare, and more
- How NFTs are influencing modern businesses
