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Before Ethereum had a market cap, it was just an idea in a college dropoutās head.
Cryptoās biggest companies arenāt being planned in boardrooms. Theyāre being built in dorm rooms, group chats, and hackathons by founders who donāt wait for permission (many of them donāt finish college at all). This is not a coincidence. Itās a repeat of a pattern weāve seen before: bold ideas, early action, and zero regard for institutional timelines.
In 2014, a group of students launched the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) to connect students exploring bitcoin and blockchain across college campuses. Within a year, BEN had grown to over 160 chapters in more than 35 countries.
What started as grassroots education quickly became a launchpad for builders.
BEN became a catalyst for its core members and for a global cohort of students who saw crypto as a blank canvas. Some dropped out. Others stayed in. Nearly all started building before the rest of the world caught on. Projects fostered by that ecosystem have gone on to collectively reach over $20 billion in peak valuations, including IOTA, Optimism, Bitso, Augur, Wanchain, Notional and Roll.
That same spirit of early action led me and Erick Pinos, former president of MITās Bitcoin Club, to co-found Dropout Capital, backing young, technical founders who move before the world notices.
Erick Pinos will speak at Consensus 2025 on May 16 in a panel titled āThe Talent Pipeline: How to Find a Job in Crypto.ā
As Pinos puts it:
āOver the past seven years weāve met with countless student founders and at least half a dozen have become unicornsā¦weāre excited to give others the opportunity to be a part of funding the next generation of blockchain innovation.ā
This urgency isnāt new. Itās the same drive that shaped early tech giants. Steve Jobs (Apple), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Patrick & John Collison (Stripe) all left college behind to build companies that redefined their industries.
Web3 founders are following the same path
Some of cryptoās most influential founders started the same way:
ā¢ Vitalik Buterin dropped out of the University of Waterloo to launch Ethereum (peaked at $500 billion+)
ā¢ Charles Hoskinson left the University of Colorado before founding Cardano (peaked at $70 billion)
ā¢ Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple and Stellar, dropped out of UC Berkeley (Ripple peaked at $130 billion)
ā¢ Jesse Powell left Cal State to build Kraken (valued at $10 billion)
ā¢ Shayne Coplan dropped out of NYU in his first semester to start Polymarket (estimated at $1 billion)
ā¢ Joey Krug left Pomona to co-found Augur (peaked at $1 billion)
ā¢ Jeremy Gardner, who co-founded Augur with Krug, dropped out of the University of Michigan (peaked at $1 billion)
ā¢ Jinglan Wang left Wellesley to build Eximchain and later helped lead Optimism (peaked at $11 billion+)
ā¢ Noah Tweedale, co-founder of Pump.fun, never enrolled (estimated at $1 billion+)
At Dropout Capital, weāve backed early-stage companies including:
ā¢ Vana, founded at MIT, building a decentralized data marketplace
ā¢ SatLayer, started by MIT alumni and former VCs, creating Bitcoin-native compute for AI
ā¢ Tenderize, launched by students at Marquette University, building a liquid staking marketplace
ā¢ Algebra.Finance, founded by a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a background in mobile operating systems, rethinking on-chain prediction infrastructure
One place where these stories, and the stories of the next generation are already being shared is ChainStories, a podcast I host alongside Erick.
ChainStories takes listeners behind the scenes of some of the most successful projects in crypto, including Plume Network, YesNoError, Algebra.Finance, Virtuals.io, TON, Horizon Labs, and many others, breaking down how real companies are built from idea to launch, and helping founders and VCs understand the decisions, tradeoffs, and risks that happen long before anyone notices.
The future of crypto isnāt being theorized at conferences or slow-walked through corporate committees.
Itās being built by people who move early, take risks, and start building before the world even realizes whatās happening. And, if history is any guide, the companies that matter most wonāt be the ones that waited.
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