A 25-year-old traded $2 billion of crypto despite living with his parents, according to public records cited by The Australian.
Darren Nguyen’s crypto trading business, PO Street Capital, is registered at his parents’ house in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The firm made around $7 million in profit after tax for the fiscal year ending June 2021, per the documents, which were filed with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.
The filings from the ASIC show that PO Street Capital’s net profit increased by over 1,400% from the previous year, when the firm made profits of around $460,000.
Nguyen’s trades coincided with a crypto boom in 2021. Over that fiscal year, Bitcoin’s value more than tripled, while Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, went up 865%.
However, crypto news outlet, Cointelegraph, points out that Nguyen was likely able to trade at such a high volume only thanks to leverage. That would involve borrowing funds from a broker to trade at higher levels than one’s cash balance, which carries a higher risk.
Nguyen and his mother didn’t comment to The Australian, and could not be reached by Insider.
PO Street Capital’s records for 2021 were filed in late 2022, but it’s unclear how the business has fared since a crash in crypto prices over the past year.
The market has suffered thanks to a range of factors, including the bankruptcy of FTX and subsequent arrest of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. That episode has prompted officials across the globe to speak about more strictly regulating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
Even prior to the collapse of FTX, however, the crypto market had been on shaky ground, with asset prices falling amid waning investor sentiment.
Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $69,000 in November 2021, but currently sits around $16,600. Although, since PO Street Capital first registered in June 2018, Bitcoin is still up around 118% as of Tuesday morning.
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