Forgotten the golden boys, welcome to the ” tokenboys “, these geniuses of the computer that make a fortune in bitcoins and other cryptodevises, as well as in the technology called the ” blockchain “. They no longer appear, as their elders, on the terraces of the skyscrapers of Wall Street, cocaïnés, high rollers, the shirt unbuttoned.
To meet them, it is necessary to take the metro, direction Brooklyn, and then pass by a Biergarten run-down, a factory of chocolate ” bobo “, a shop that sells juice, organic coconut before, finally, entering a building covered in street art, A brick building of dwellings and offices, where the air conditioning is not running at full steam and work in silence silently of young geeks in t-shirt, sprawled on couches, feet up on the table.
This is where Joe Lubin, a Canadian, 53 years old, was installed in 2014 his company, ConsenSys. With its 900 employees in 14 offices around the world, including Paris, this engineering graduate of Princeton seeks to exploit the possibilities of Ethereum, a platform for the exchange of a cryptodevise called ether, of which he is the co-founder.
The ether is the rival of bitcoin, but more promising. The first chips have been sold in 2014 for a price between 20 and 30 cents. In June, they were worth about 500 $ (430 euros), which is two thousand times more. Joe Lubin refused to reveal how much it has, but, last winter, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at between 1 billion and $ 5 billion. Because, despite appearances, the money flows like water in this environment.
A “repentant” the world of yesterday
The Wall Street Journal has referred to the shortage of these cryptogénies, already too rich because they have made a fortune selling the tokens associated to their innovations through the famous ICO (for initial corner offering), the equivalent of ipos (initial public offering)….
