From 0 to a 9-digit asset crypto capital spokesperson: A closer look at Andrew Kang's dual life

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

Editor’s Note: Recently, Andrew Kang, co-founder of Mechanism Capital, expressed bearish views on ETH. Many may have limited knowledge about him, but he has been deeply involved in the crypto industry for many years, having invested in high-quality projects like Thorchain, Pancakeswap, and Frax Finance, which have market capitalizations in the billions. He has also achieved significant success in trading. Odaily Planet Daily will introduce Andrew Kang in this article, combining insights shared by X platform user @Atlas for readers' reference.

Recent Views: Limited Upside for ETH, BTC May Reach New Highs in 2025

In the current volatile market, everyone has different opinions, and Andrew Kang (hereinafter referred to as Kang), who wears multiple hats as a capital partner, crypto KOL, and legendary trader, may offer more valuable insights.

On June 24, Kang posted on X: "I’m starting to realize that this is the first cycle and complete bull market many cryptocurrency investors are experiencing. During this bull market, BTC's multi-day decline has been very limited, capped at 20%, and many seem to have increased leverage during the last pullback in April. However, the previous cycle often saw market liquidations, leading to 30% to 60% pullbacks, evaporating hundreds of billions of dollars. Different cycles have different paradigms, but when people become too comfortable, believing that certain things cannot happen, it is usually when disaster strikes. While I hold a bearish stance, this is not to tell you to short the market or sell everything. Be sure to pay attention to investment risks and do not place all your bets on a single trade; having more capital reserves is invaluable if faced with larger-than-expected market fluctuations."

Subsequently, perhaps to avoid "face-slapping" or feeling that the risk warning was not clear enough, he added: "The current market environment reminds me of May 2021, not June 2021, and certainly not December 2020. At that time, we had become accustomed to only rising and were competing to buy the dip. We experienced a significant adjustment from $64,000 to $45,000, but everyone was expecting a rebound. The final outcome was a downward trend. We held onto hope; for example, more retail investors were coming, $40,000 was a strong support, super cycles, etc. The current environment is similar, all within 9-10 months after the start of a bull market. Except this time, it’s about the Ethereum ETF—legendary trader GCR has expressed bullish views. I believe GCR's timeframe over the years is correct, and we will see BTC reach new highs in 2025 (but not all altcoins will follow suit). This does not mean the market won't experience extreme corrections within a few months. After all, the market can humble even the most arrogant."

On June 23, Kang analyzed the potential impact of Ethereum spot ETFs on the market, believing that Bitcoin spot ETFs provide a channel for many new buyers to allocate Bitcoin in their portfolios, but the impact of Ethereum ETFs is far less clear. Unless Ethereum creates a convincing path to improve economic conditions, its price will not see significant upside from the approval of spot ETFs.

On June 20, Kang's views were as clear as ever: "Although market momentum has turned bearish due to a lack of significant ETF inflows, I firmly believe Bitcoin remains strong and will not drop below $50,000; for Ethereum, I predict its price may remain stable until the ETF is listed, but the upper limit for this year is expected to be around $4,000."

It is evident that Kang is more optimistic about Bitcoin's future compared to Ethereum, based on his extensive experience accumulated in the crypto market.

Multiple Roles: A Dual Life as a Crypto KOL and Investor

As of now, Kang's personal account on the X platform has over 260,000 followers. Previously, he was a co-founder of the cryptocurrency mining operator MinerUpdate and stated that most mining operations currently do not use derivatives. This presents a huge upside opportunity for derivative exchanges like Deribit, BitMEX, and Binance. As competition in the mining industry intensifies and profit margins decline, mining operators will need to start venturing into the derivatives market to survive and thrive. The trading activities generated can yield returns several times greater than mining activities.

In June 2020, the official account of @Mechanism Capital was established, and Kang transitioned from a trader and crypto KOL to a crypto investor. "Shadowing leads to investment"—this is often a significant characteristic of the cryptocurrency industry. As mentioned in our previous article "Dissecting the Investment Lists of Top KOLs to Find New Alpha," when a KOL's influence reaches a certain level, along with the growth of personal wealth, the resulting investment opportunities increase, making it a natural progression to become an angel investor in the crypto industry. The difference lies in some maintaining their personal investment identity while others choose to establish an institution to operate corresponding investment funds. Kang chose the latter. Previously, Mechanism Capital successfully invested in the well-known blockchain project NEON.

In February of this year, Kang shared his investment philosophy on social media: "The way to achieve a thousandfold increase is to identify teams with outstanding product potential early on."

He mentioned, "In 2018, I had a $50,000 portfolio, and by mid-2021, I had grown this portfolio to the same scale as many well-known cryptocurrency funds in the field without taking in any external capital. The only way to achieve this was to identify S-tier teams with outstanding product potential early on, accumulate most of the ownership of projects through the public market, and support them until they appreciate over 100 times, some even 1000 times. The support methods include token incentives/issuance design, marketing/community development strategies, DeFi integration/partnerships, exchange connections, product design, introducing other signals/value-added funds/investors/users/developers, and becoming a high-energy user of the protocol, etc. Many of these projects, I followed from the startup stage with a market cap of less than $50 million, growing to over $2 billion, some even exceeding $5 billion, including Thorchain, Pancakeswap, and Frax Finance."

Kang's Asset Overview

According to data from @CryptoRankio, Kang's latest and quite notable investments include @BlastL2 and @puffer_finance. In addition, he has also invested in the NFT collateral lending platform MetaStreet, the Solana ecosystem cross-chain communication network Zeus Network (where he is a leading investor), the crypto gaming betting platform Shuffle, the Blast ecosystem lending project Orbit Protocol, and the RWA Layer 2 network Plume Network, among others.

Moreover, Kang is also quite attentive to another popular sector outside of cryptocurrency. In February of this year, he made a "historic largest investment" in the AI humanoid robot company Figure (note: distinct from the blockchain financial services company Figure Technologies), with an investment amount of $19 million. He believes that Brett Adcock (the founder of Figure) and his team will seize opportunities in the human labor market, which is the largest capital market in the world, reaching up to $42 trillion, and will deploy millions of robots in the coming years, with at least 100 million robots deployed by the end of this decade.

Crypto Rank Investment Portfolio Interface

Additionally, according to data from Rootdata, Kang has invested in 12 projects over the past year, with 15 recorded projects, including his deep involvement in the NFT crowdfunding DAO organization PleasrDAO.

It is worth mentioning that, according to information from Rootdata, his network includes several partners from Mechanism Capital, including Steven Cho, Ken, Marc Weinstein, and PleasrDAO founder DeFiTed.

This inevitably leads to another of Kang's multiple identities: a seasoned NFT collector and an active participant in meme coins.

Cultural Enthusiast: Azuki Was Once a Favorite, Meme Coins Are a New Asset Class

As early as 2021, Mechanism Capital invested in the NFT project Kanon. At that time, the first sub-project launched was K21, a closed art machine gun pool that aimed to provide liquidity exposure to the works of 21 influential contemporary, digital, and crypto artists, and to reshape funding, charity, curation, and custodianship models by integrating DeFi, combining the motivations of artists with the returns for investors.

In September 2022, Kang purchased Azuki #4978 through the NFT trading market X2Y2 for 105 ETH (then worth about $143,000).

In October 2022, Kang bought Azuki #5558 through the NFT trading market X2Y2 for 200 ETH.

In June 2023, according to data from the crypto data monitoring platform Nansen, Kang held 299 Azuki and 580 Elementals, both ranking first in total holdings of the respective series. At that time, he also held 436 BEANZ.

In March 2024, Kang purchased the original Pepe NFT, previously owned by 3AC (Three Arrows Capital), through Sotheby's auction house. This NFT was the first Pepe NFT authorized by the original creator Matt Furie, which was first sold on April 17, 2021, for 420 ETH and was later acquired by Starry Night Capital, a subsidiary of 3AC, for 1000 ETH.

Moreover, Kang has a high opinion of meme coins and has made multiple purchases, even changing his X platform account avatar to an IQ50 meme character.

In February of this year, Kang boldly stated that his crypto fund Mechanism Capital had bet on Trump-themed tokens and related NFTs. Subsequently, Nansen monitoring data showed that on January 19, Mechanism Capital's wallet purchased 500,000 TRUMP at a cost of about $0.506, and then on the same day, it bought another 23,900 TRUMP. Among these, 136,200 TRUMP were allocated to the Mechanism Capital wallet, 135,800 TRUMP were sent to related wallets of the Mechanism Capital team, and 58,400 TRUMP were sent to partner Marc Weinstein.

In March, Kang again made a bold call, stating, "Meme coins have become the global focus of speculative liquidity. Compared to traditional equities, global users now have easier access to meme coins. This is why Dogecoin's increase outpaced Gamestop's stock price increase. In the last cycle, the total market cap of meme coins reached $100 billion, and each cycle's market cap peak usually sees multiple growths. Besides retail investors, HWN traders and hedge funds are gradually entering the market, and there is still a long way to go." He then stated, "New funds will continue to buy meme coins," aiming for excess returns in the market, and boldly predicted, "Meme coin 2.0, or 'culture coins,' will emerge, targeting specific audiences/ideologies/groups. Every celebrity/influencer will have their favorite co-branded token, primarily tokens not on CEX, which means new dollars will appear on-chain to purchase large amounts of SOL tokens, just like during the ETH and NFT seasons."

Subsequently, the market's development indeed came to fruition, with popular Solana meme coins like BOME, NAP, and SLERF emerging, alongside older projects like PEPE, PEOPLE, WIF, BONK, and FLOKI, sparking a meme coin frenzy. The subsequent meme coin projects like JENNER and MOTHER, initiated by pump.fun, also serve as examples.

At that time, in contrast to other market views, he held meme coins in high regard: "Meme coins are not a zero-sum game; they are a new asset class."

Conclusion: Investors Who Dare to Make Judgments Are Good Traders

Looking back at Kang's past investment history and social media posts, we can see a charismatic individual who dares to make judgments in a complex market environment: he can timely respond to market operations, provide corresponding analytical basis, and actively advocate for investment projects and promising narrative tracks. It can be said that his journey from zero to immense wealth is no coincidence.

It is no wonder that in February of this year, Chris Burniske, former head of crypto at ARK Invest and now a partner at Placeholder VC, expressed an open attitude towards Kang's view that Bitcoin's price would reach an all-time high in March. Subsequently, the market trend indeed followed suit.

Of course, Kang's investment journey has not been smooth sailing. For example, he built a position in CELR in 2021 and proposed the now highly prescient view that "Layer 2 is not a winner-takes-all field." Although the token has since faded into obscurity, many of his insights are worth learning from.

Kang's personal experience tells us that being bold in expressing opinions and making one's own judgments is essential to finding one's "mechanism principle" in the turbulent crypto market and growing into a capital giant.