Anonymity in Crypto Raises Alarm

At work, he makes one exception to the secrecy. On calls with shoppers, he usually makes use of his precise first identify to introduce himself, involved that conventional enterprise executives could also be uncomfortable working with somebody recognized merely as Legend.

Over the past 12 months, the enterprise capital agency Paradigm has additionally employed engineers and researchers who function anonymously; they seem on the corporate’s staff page underneath pseudonyms. The newest rent was a crypto engineer who goes by Transmissions11 and attends highschool “in his spare time,” in accordance with his firm bio. (Jim Prosser, a Paradigm spokesman, stated the workers’ bosses knew their identities.)

In interviews, nameless crypto entrepreneurs and engineers supplied a wide range of causes for concealing their names. Some feared {that a} regulatory crackdown might put them within the cross hairs of regulation enforcement. Others stated they disliked the eye or nervous that their rising wealth might make them targets for thieves and hackers.

The anonymous entrepreneurs usually take excessive steps to maintain their identities non-public, utilizing voice-altering software program on calls or requiring enterprise companions to signal nondisclosure agreements.

Some enterprise companies are keen to spend money on them anyway. Final 12 months, 0xMaki, a developer who helped run the distinguished crypto undertaking SushiSwap, raised $60 million from a group of venture investors, together with Ms. Wu, with out disclosing his actual identify to them. (The deal fell by way of after members of SushiSwap — a so-called decentralized autonomous group, or DAO, during which particular person traders maintain vital sway — raised considerations concerning the funding.)

Final summer season, the nameless founding father of Alchemix, one other main crypto undertaking, raised $4.9 million from a bunch of enterprise companies led by CMS Holdings. Dan Matuszewski, a founding father of CMS, stated he by no means requested the undertaking’s chief, who makes use of the pseudonym Scoopy Trooples, to disclose his id.

“Plenty of these guys have reputations from through the years,” Mr. Matuszewski stated. “It doesn’t appear to be it makes a ton of sense for them to run off and abscond with the funds.”