An Interview with Nithin Eapen, Chief Investment Officer at Arcadia Crypto Ventures
By: Charles Wu
Tags: Arcadia Crypto Ventures, Blockchain, CEO, Bitcoin

I had the pleasure of interviewing Nithin Eapen

Nithin Eapen, Chief Investment Officer at Arcadia Crypto Ventures. Arcadia is private crypto only investment fund. We believe that bitcoin and related technology is the greatest socio-political economic revolution that has ever taken place in the history of mankind. Being believers in decentralization and tokenization of every process we back great founders and projects who can make this vision come true.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”

Before forming Arcadia along with my partners Richard Rofe and Madhu Kutty, I bootstrapped and ran an IT services company. And before that, I was a trader on Wall Street.

At one of our meetings, my friend and managing partner Rich asked us about some technical questions he had on bitcoin. I told him all I that I knew (which was not much) but had to hit the books to understand and explain it further. After thoroughly going through Satoshi’s bitcoin whitepaper and doing an analysis of the data points, I came to an understanding that this is “IT”. The single most fascinating technology ever built by mankind. The ability to send value over the wire without a middleman. This was not conceivable prior to the Satoshi paper and distributed proof-of-work consensus algorithm.

Once it dawned on me that is the future, all I did was invest whatever possible or made an all-in push into bitcoin. Which is a little crazy as I had to convince my wife about this all-in gamble. Since she was an actuary and understood the power of this technology it turned out to be easier than I thought( I guess she just kept supporting my ideas due to belief that the even a dead clock gets the time right twice a day). After that happened when Richard decided to invest his family money into CryptoCurrencies he decided to make me run the fund as I had all my skin in the game.

Our experience in investing in cryptos and ICOs then made us move on to help founders run coin offerings and hence we got into the consulting side of the crypto advisory business.

Can you tell me about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

We are always working on extraordinary projects. One is a general aviation data storage solution ecosystem called AeroChain. Another is an institutional liquidity aggregation platform for cryptocurrencies from Edgewater Markets.

We are working with some of the greatest names in entertainment industry to build a South East Asian experience center via tokenization on the strip in Vegas called KindHeaven.

We are advisors on a loyalty atomic swap platform known as DigitalBits. We are investing in a decentralized poker platform from Virtue Poker. We are tokenizing a Gold Mine in Africa.

What are the 5 things that most excite you about crypto? Why?

- The ability to transfer value over the wire without a middleman because that gives us control over money production and distribution. Without wealth or money control by the state, we are not slaves anymore to the Leviathan.

- It has given the ability for 3 billion people who had no access to banks to become banked without any KYC and AML ( Even though you think why is this so hard, you have 2 billion plus people who do not have id and address proof to start bank accounts)

- It has taught us to be knowledgeable about security and collaboration.

- It has allowed us as small investors to be on par with Venture Capitalists to take part in some 100x returning crowdfunding projects like ethereum and icon. Earlier due to regualtion that were setup in the name of protecting mom and pop investor the common man was not allowed to take part in such investment opportunity.

-Cost of doing any transaction is coming down dramatically as the middleman who extracts rent for allowing strangers to do a transaction can be taken out and trsut can be brought in by the system.

What are the 5 things worry you about crypto? Why?

The prime worry about is Regulation from politicians who do not understand this technology and also from ones who do understand this technology.

For the guys who do not understand this technology, they will say in the name of protecting the common man this speculative technology must be banned.

For the ones who understand this technology, I fear that they know that they will lose control over money printing and they will ban this technology.

My only other worry is the meteoric or exponential rise in prices cannot be sustained every day and the last set of investors will see their investments crash and if they did this investment on credit cards or margins they will start yelling this is a fraud.

What 3 things would you advise to someone who wanted to emulate your career? Can you share an example for each idea?

1. Always keep learning, you do not know when the big break comes to you. ( I chose to learn bitcoin after a question was asked, although it appeared like a fraud I decided with an open mind to learn it, I could not imagine all those geeks could be stupid)

2. Be persistent and determined. You will keep falling most of the time, Get up and start again. That is the life of an Entrepreneur. ( I have failed multiple times and have been rejected multiple times and lost on a number of occasions but at no point did my disappointment last for more than a day. I always believed and still believe a loss if ok as long as I am breathing I can still keep ploughing and can try something different )

3. Take risks in life and always provide value to others be it for a customer, a friend or even an enemy. ( I always was thrilled at the prospect of phenomenal returns and understood that can only come from concentrated bets in life. If you diversify your investment at best what you make if risk-free rate + nominal basis points. I concentrate and give it my all at that time. The thought of a failure does not even cross my mind.

Being helpful and going out of the way to help someone and not expecting anything back is the best thing you can do. It truly frees you and keeps you happy.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this.

I would love to sit with Warren Buffet for 4–8 hours because that is the time it will take to teach an 80+-year-old man about the new technology. He missed the technology boom since he did not get it. Now he says Bitcoin is a fad or a fraud because no one can explain this to him and I know that is one thing I can do very well as a crypto-evangelist. I would love to sit with any naysayer and make them understand why they need to look into this transformative technology and why this is happening right under their nose and they still cannot get it. The ability to see around the curve is hard for any traditional investor once you have formed your bias.

Watch the full interview below: