Finman used his fortune to fund an educational business – and he’s not as awful as he seems on Instagram 1
Erik Finman: ‘Bitcoin will either be nothing or everything, and I think it will be more everything.’
Photograph: Handout/Erik Finman
Erik Finman is one of the world’s youngest bitcoin millionaires – an
achievement he’s not shy about flaunting. The 19-year-old’s Instagram
feed is full of ostentatious photos of himself stepping out of private
jets or lying on beds covered in money with captions like: “Cash so
worthless compared to Bitcoin I’m sleeping on it …”
In one photo he is pictured smoking, with the caption: “Sometimes you
just need a good smoke to relax when you have to live with the
exhausting burden of so much money and too many beautiful women.” After
one of his fans admonishes him, he replies: “Don’t worry guys. It’s not a
real cigarette. Just a hundred. Don’t smoke!”
The teenager, who first bought bitcoin at age 12 with $1,000 from his
grandmother, styles himself in a similar vein to the notorious Martin
Shkreli; he’s just younger and not in jail.
However, all is not as it seems with Finman. Far from being a vapid
bitcoin bro, he admits his social media presence is a carefully
calculated front. “I think being a provocateur is a fun way to get
people to pay attention to my ideas,” he tells me over the phone from
his current base in San Francisco. “You see the reaction to it, people
go crazy. But that helps draw attention to the actual world-changing
projects that I want to do.”
1Finman first heard about bitcoin when his older brother took him to
an Occupy Wall Street protest. He fell in love with the revolutionary
potential of cryptocurrency, he says. An early adopter, Finman bought
his first bitcoin when it only cost around $10. Just a few years later,
it hit around $1,100. Finman sold $100,000 worth of bitcoin when the
currency was on the up and, at age 15, used the money to start an online
educational business called Botangle, which matched students with
tutors via video chat. He was inspired to start the business, he says,
because he had “a terrible school life”. One teacher told him to drop
out and work at McDonalds while another held an “Erik Finman roast
session” where students were encouraged to make fun of him. Despite his
business success, his parents wouldn’t let him completely drop out of
school. So he made a bet with them: if he made $1m before turning 18, he
wouldn’t have to attend college. He won that bet last year.
Education is a big deal for the Finman family. His parents met at
Stanford while getting their doctorates in electrical engineering and
physics and his entire family, he says, is very smart. “I think of them
as the Elon Musk version of the Kardashians,” he says. His mom was
involved in Nasa in the 1980s and, Finman says, “almost became an
astronaut on the Challenger mission”. However, she got pregnant with
Finman’s brother and, luckily, avoided the tragic launch. Apart from his
experiences with high school, Finman seemed to have an idyllic
childhood. He grew up on a llama farm in Idaho, for one thing. “We had
one llama called Sausage who unfortunately got turned into a sausage,”
he reminisces.
In 2015, Finman made his best business move: he sold Botangle’s
technology. The buyer offered him either 300 bitcoin or $100,000 cash –
he opted for the bitcoin. At the time it was a gamble, as bitcoin had
dipped and were worth around $200. Even though the currency continues to
fluctuate wildly (I spoke to Finman shortly after the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinrail was hacked,
causing the value of bitcoin to plummet 10% to two-month lows) he’s
still made good on his investment. One bitcoin is now worth around
$6,500. Finman has 401 bitcoin as well as various other cryptocurrencies
and continues to bet on its future. “Bitcoin will either be nothing or
everything, and I think it will be more everything. Or crypto will, at
least,” he said.
Like his mother, Finman is also interested in space exploration. He’s
currently working on a project with Nasa to launch a satellite
containing a digital time capsule into space. The capsule will contain
popular music and videos as well as other representative sounds of life
on earth, and a Taylor Swift CD. Why Taylor Swift? “We just reached out
to her out of the blue, and she was into it,” Finman shrugs. The project
is meant to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voyager launch,
which carried the “Golden Record”, a compilation of music and images
from Earth, curated by the astronomer Carl Sagan, into space as a gift
for any extraterrestrials who might stumble across it.
Sending satellites into space might be enough to occupy one person,
but not Finman. The entrepreneur has a number of projects on the go. He recently created a robot suit
based on the four-armed contraption worn by Doctor Octopus in
Spider-Man for a 10-year-old child with hypermobility issues. The child,
Aristou Meehan, is the son of one of Finman’s mentors, and wanted his
own Doctor Octopus suit to help “solve his problems”. So Finman made it
for him. “I wish someone would have helped me like that when I was his
age,” he says. There has already been some interest by investors in
adapting the suit for various uses, says Finman, but he’s moved on from
it. Right now his big project is building a physical school and
disrupting education. He’s tight-lipped on the actual details: “I’m
still in early stages.”
While
Finman’s social media presence may be satire, he’s still rich and
young. Doesn’t he ever go a little off the rails? “Oh yes, I got a fast
car, did all that,” Finman says. “Traveled all over the world. Went a
little crazy. Made a couple of stops in Ibiza and Monaco. I had to get
it out of my system, you know.” He’s also been careful to make sure his
former teachers know about his success. “I remember when the first
article [about me] came out, I sent it to the worst teacher I had. The
subject heading just said ‘look at me now bitch’.” Finman put a tracking
pixel in the email so he knows the teacher opened it. “But I didn’t
hear back.”
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