Growing up in poverty in Suriname, Etiënne vantKruys was told by his teacher he’d never succeed — but it only made him more determined to not follow in the footsteps of his parents. Thanks, in part, to crypto, he’s now living the dream.Despite his high-flying crypto VC lifestyle today, vantKruys keeps at least one foot on the ground by remembering his hungry past. He grew up dirt poor in Suriname, where his father was a drug addict who was often in prison.“I was always hungry — like, dude, always hungry. Always like, ‘Fuck, I need to eat.’ Always, always, always — it sticks with you. I don’t care if I’m in Singapore at a famous crypto conference at a high-flying restaurant, I would still order food from right to left. I would start with the price, like, ‘What can I get?’ You’re aware.”Back in 2017, anyone could easily get in on highly public ICOs raising $30 million to $50 million with a white paper full of dreams just because it had the word “blockchain” in it. Things are different today, with venture capitalists having to network and clamor to get a small placement of $250,000. Cap tables that track investor allocations fill up fast, and investors are lucky to get a pitch before needing to decide.“In this cycle, with the speed of things, you don’t have time to consider,” notes vantKruys, who heads New York-based digital asset fund TRGC. Often the only investors who have the privilege of doing full, proper due diligence are the “alpha dogs” like Coinbase Ventures and Binance, for whom he says room will be made even after a round has closed.The short stickAs vantKruys, 45, stepped out of his Uber upon arriving in San Francisco from Amsterdam for Blockchain Week in 2018, he saw a sight that brought him back to his childhood. The vast homeless population, often suffering from mental health issues, reminded him not only of his father but of the life for which he too was thought to be destined. The reality on the street of the city of technology startups was little different than those of his native Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America where the average income is under $400 per month. vantKruys lived in residential accommodation with 80 other kids in Suriname. He remains in touch with many of them on Facebook and “three quarters are doing really well.”VantKruys had a difficult childhood and bounced around foster homes before ending up at a residential institution for 80 other disadvantaged children. He was born to teenage parents, and when not in prison, his father could be found “walking around the city in his underwear, dirty and unshaven — lost on heroin.” If his start in life were a poker hand, it looked much like a 2-7 offsuit — the worst possible combination.On his first day of elementary school, his classroom teacher told him and five other peers from the facility that “People don’t escape their circumstances.”“You guys have a 99% likelihood of repeating your parents’ lives,” the teacher lectured them in front of the whole class. VantKruys asked if that meant that he still had a 1% chance of making it. Some students began to giggle. “In Suriname culture, that’s a no-no. You never contradict or say anything smart to teachers. I got smacked as hell, like, ‘Know your place,’” he recalls. At eight years old, he knew there was a very hard journey ahead.But vantKruys had a plan. He believed in that 1% chance, even if no one would allow him to dream of it. “I thought of it like a boxing match in my head. I’ve got to beat 99 Mike Tysons to get where I want to, for that one shot,” he remembers. He worked hard, often getting the best grades.Homelessness was just one of the “Mike Tysons” he had to defeat. After high school, he managed to get into Utrecht University in the Netherlands to study pharmacy. He wanted to become a doctor, and his uncle covered his airfare. However, without money, he had to make do with sleeping in the central railway station, where he kept his things in a locker, and washing up at a local gym before heading to his morning classes.“This is just another Mike Tyson fight,” he thought to himself as he lived life in survival mode, convinced that one day there would be a final battle, and that he would make it. VantKruys’ uncle lived nearby, and in 1998, his uncle introduced him to stock trading. The concept of buying portions of a company was entirely foreign, but he was enthralled. He went to one of his professors for advice, who suggested that “If you’re really interested in the funding of the biotech markets, you should look into the hedge funds on Wall Street.” VantKruys was off to the races.By using his knowledge of pharmacy to compare clinical trial data with public statements put out by companies, vantKruys managed to find an edge that “made a bit of money.” He dropped out of university so that he could focus full time on trading, developing a strategy around short-selling biotech stocks that seemed to overpromise without hard evidence.“I treat everything as a short — everything is bullshit until proven otherwise.”Enter BitcoinWhen the financial crisis hit in 2008–2009, vantKruys recalls going down the rabbit hole of endless questions: “What the fuck? What the hell is value? What is money? What is banking? What is finance?” the part-time stock trader remembers thinking as he investigated “all these conspiracy theories surrounding money.”When vantKruys read about Bitcoin on a forum around 2013, calling “bullshit” was his first instinct. However, many in his circle soon started talking about it, even at his birthday party in November 2013. “One of my colleagues came to the party and had everyone install the Blockchain.info wallet. Bitcoin, at that time, was like $300,” he recalls.By 2015, he was convinced that cryptocurrency was the future. He even left behind basketball,…
