From Santa Monica to $200 Billion: Tether's Troubled Rise
Three aspiring entrepreneurs, Reeve Collins, Craig Sellars, and Brock Pierce, launched a startup from a Santa Monica bungalow in July 2014. Their product was Realcoin, a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency that could be used for everyday transactions.
The trio pitched it to Silicon Valley's big investors, but were laughed out of the room due to their unimpressive résumés. Sellars was the only software engineer among them; Collins was an ad man notorious for pop-ups on the early internet; and Pierce was a former child actor best known for starring in The Mighty Ducks.
Scarcely a decade later, their idea had achieved phenomenal success. Now rebranded Tether, the project is worth $200 billion, with its token USDT being the most traded cryptocurrency in the world.