a man raised $4.2B from crypto investors, bought 164,000 Bitcoin at $6,000 with their money, and IPO'd a $10B company
and investors got nothing
be
@BrendanBlumer
- CEO of Block(dot)one
- the company behind EOS
- ran the biggest ICO in crypto history
June 2017 to June 2018
- Block(dot)one ran a year long ICO for EOS tokens
- raised $4.1 billion in ETH from retail investors
- biggest ICO ever at the time
- money went straight to Blockone not the EOS chain
- Cayman Islands company
everyone thought they were funding the next Ethereum killer
they were funding Brendan's Bitcoin bag
heres what he actually did with the money
- crypto winter hit in 2018
- BTC crashed to $3,200
- while everyone was panicking Brendan was buying
- converted a massive chunk of the $4.1B into Bitcoin
- bought around the $6,000 level
- accumulated 164,000 BTC
- at $6K thats roughly $1 billion spent on BTC
- put the rest in US government bonds
by 2021 that 164,000 BTC was worth $10,000,000,000
read that again. he turned investor money into a $10B Bitcoin treasury.
the SEC came knocking
- fined Blockone $24 million for unregistered securities
- thats 0.6% of what they raised
- nobody had to give money back
- Brendan paid it like a parking ticket
then he built Bullish
- a crypto exchange seeded with his Bitcoin stash
- put in 164,000 BTC
- put in $100M cash
- put in 20M EOS tokens
- got Peter Thiel, Mike Novogratz, and Nomura to invest $300M more
- hired Tom Farley the former NYSE president as CEO
- total starting balance sheet: over $10 billion
August 2025
- Bullish IPO'd on the NYSE
- ticker: BLSH
- raised $1.1 billion at $37 per share
- shares surged 84-160% on day one
- closed around $68-70
- market cap instantly hit $10 billion
Brendan owns 26-30% of Bullish after the IPO
he is now a billionaire
meanwhile EOS investors
- Block(dot)one promised to invest $1B back into the EOS ecosystem
- most of the money went to BTC, bonds, and Bullish instead
- EOS the token massively underperformed
- Blockone quietly stepped away from the project
- the community felt completely betrayed
- lawsuits and class action settlements are still ongoing
this is the greatest finesse in crypto history and its not even close
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