This is what all the fuss is about – CryptoPunk 8348
A Queenslander who started off working at his local service station for just A$15 ($15.72) per hour is now worth at least A$100 million if he cashed out on all his assets right now.
Daniel Maegaard, 31, from the Sunshine Coast, used to work the weekend shift at his petrol station while studying psychology at university.
But a combination of luck and skill saw him stumble upon new technology crazes such as cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) years before they became mainstream, allowing him to become a multi-millionaire in less than a decade.
In fact, one lucky purchase for a CryptoPunk NFT in May 2020 cost Maegaard just A$18,000 at the time — and it’s value has since soared to more than A$50 million for the digital artwork.
The jetsetter, who has travelled to more than 50 countries, says it all started for him when he first heard about Bitcoin in 2013.
“Me being me, I was procrastinating on my assignment — I never really wanted to be a psychologist anyway,” Maegaard recalled, speaking to news.com.au.
“I came across this BBC article talking about the parabolic rise of Bitcoin, it had gone from A$20 to A$50.
“I really did see the power in being your own bank, total control over your money.”
Using his A$4000 in savings — the only money he had to his name — he poured it into cryptocurrency.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
Maegaard had finished his psychology degree and was following in his father’s footsteps by studying law when cryptocurrency suddenly boomed in 2017.
“During 2017 I made enough money to be comfortable enough to walk away from everything,” he said.
He had invested in blockchains including Bitcoin, PP coin, Lite coin and Ripple XRP.
For an idea of his return on investment, Bitcoin’s worth jumped by 1000 per cent while Ripple was the best performing coin of that year, up by a whopping 36,000 per cent in 12 months.
“Crypto has a bad wrap, especially among the older generation,” he said.
He felt the need to “prove” to his parents and friends that it was a worthwhile path he was going down.
“Initially people were confused but as the years went on, they realised this was working very well for me,” he added.
Very well is an understatement.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
At the beginning of 2017, Maegaard started off with crypto investments worth A$120,000. By April of that year, he had made his first million dollars.
“I’ve never been more alive in my life, my heart was going, my eyes were like saucepans, I was really excited,” he recalled.
But he sat tight on his crypto portfolio and invested more. By the end of 2017, that A$1 million had ballooned into A$20 million.
“I timed it perfectly,” he added.
He cashed out half his profits — A$10 million — and invested the money into Australian commercial and residential property.
By this point, he had A$180,000 in passive income flowing into his bank account from tenants.
He then booked a one-way ticket to Europe.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
“I missed my next semester, I never went back to uni ever again,” Mr Maegaard said.
For the next 18 months he wandered the world, visiting at least 50 separate countries.
“I kind of got bored, I guess I semi retired, but I was only 27 at the time,” he said.
“In mid-2018, I grounded myself a bit, I needed to strive for something a little more.
“That’s when I started to look into decentralised finance and NFTs, that’s how I re-imagined myself.”
The self-made multi-millionaire said he continued to “dabble” in cryptocurrency but turned his attention to derivatives — where he made A$1 million a year.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
He also started investing early on in NFTs.
When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived on Australia’s shores in 2020, Maegaard was, like the rest of us, stuck here with international borders closed.
“When the pandemic hit, I dug deeper [into NFTs] because there was nothing to do, not even travel,” he said.
“During this time I acquired some of the most sought after NFTs.”
He bought one NFT in May 2020 for A$18,000 which he likened to “the Mona Lisa of NFTs”.
“It’s basically priceless,” he added.
He had purchased CryptoPunk 8348, or the “seven trait CryptoPunk”, which is valuable because of its rarity.
CryptoPunks are a NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain launched in 2017 by the Larva Labs studio.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
There are only 10,000 unique CryptoPunk tokens and the artworks are entirely “on-chain”, meaning nobody can alter the code and which also means there will never be more than 10,000 punks.
During 2019 and 2020 he observed the NFT space being “pretty quiet” but last year it “really took off”.
“We saw more volume in one month than we saw in the entirety of 2020,” he explained.
Maegaard recalls giving his friends NFTs as birthday and Christmas presents.
He gave one person a A$300 CryptoPunk NFT gift. She sold it at the beginning of 2021 for A$70,000. The value of the punk art work soared to A$500,000 at the peak of the craze.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
Meanwhile, an auction house approached Mr Maegaard offering more than $50 million if he was willing to sell CryptoPunk 8348 to them.
“I don’t think it would have sold for whatever they were offering,” he added.
With more money than ever, Maegaard has now turned his attention to an entirely new career — being a DJ.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
He has created a helmet to wear while DJing that is a physical embodiment of his CryptoPunk artwork — see above.
Maegaard’s DJ moniker is Seedphrase.
In November, he DJed an NFT-themed party where other crypto and NFT millionaires rubbed shoulders with each other.
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
A post shared by Daniel Maegaard (@danielmaegaard)
He’s currently in LA working on his passion for music and has another gig booked up at a Selfridges fashion show in London.
“I’m living my best life,” he added.

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Entrepreneur and veteran of Goldman Sachs’ Marcus retail banking unit Adam Dell is launching Domain Money, a new cryptocurrency platform that will be using social sentiment to help investors.
Dell, who is also the brother of Dell Technologies Inc. DELL, -0.05% founder Michael Dell, put together a team from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS, -0.18% for Domain Money. He has drawn $33 million in Series A financing from Bessemer Venture Partners, Maveron, RRE Ventures, SV Angel, Salesforce.com CRM, +2.88% founder Marc Benioff, and Joe Lonsdale. Domain Money plans to launch a Series B fundraising round later in 2022.
“I’m a serial entrepreneur and I love building things,” Dell said. “The opportunity to work with 25 of my former colleagues from Goldman was a very exciting thing. Startups have flexibility and an ability to execute that larger companies don’t have.”
The New York-based company officially launched on Tuesday with 43 employees, many of whom worked with Adam Dell when he was head of product at Marcus from 2018 to 2021. Domain Money plans to hire up to 30 more people this year.
“Thematically, we are interested in blockchain technologies that serve a core banking function, such as DeFi money markets,” Dell said.  “We believe there’s a class of investors who are familiar with and comfortable with Fidelity, Schwab and ETrade who don’t feel like those platforms are giving them robust access to the crypto asset class. We’re trying to serve that customer.”
Domain Money offers actively managed stock and crypto investment strategies managed by an expert investment team from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley MS, -0.35% and Bridgewater Associates.
The unique features of Domain Money include its Signal product, which monitors social media outlets and assigns a social sentiment score to each type of asset. Domain Money tracks protocol health by looking at GitHub submissions within the blockchain developer community.  The company also measures the flow of funds onto and out of exchanges an an indication of market sentiment. 
“As we look at each of those components of the blockchain ecosystem, it’s apparent to me that this technology is going to become the future of finance,” Dell said.
Dell, who is CEO of Domain Money, said he sees a bright future for blockchain technology as the backbone of a more efficient transaction system that’s rapidly growing.
To illustrate the size of the market now, Dell pointed out that Visa Inc. V, +8.36% handled about $10 trillion in transaction volume in 2021, while ethereum, the popular blockchain-backed cryptocurrency, accounted for about $11 trillion in volume.
The market for decentralized finance platform — or DeFi transactions, where consumers and institutions can borrow and lend money — totals roughly $200 billion in 2022, up from $1 billion in 2018. Non fungible tokens (NFTs) amounted to $23 billion in 2021. Stablecoin assets grew to $155 billion in 2021 from about $5 billion in 2018. 
The company’s team of Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater Associates veterans manages baskets of stocks and cryptocurrencies for investors less familiar with the asset class.
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Steve Gelsi covers banking and cannabis as a Senior Reporter for MarketWatch.

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