September 21, 2025
A 2022 report profiling Black buyers who misplaced substantial investments indicated that Kevin Durant’s success in bitcoin is an anomaly.
Newly acquired Houston Rocket Kevin Durant has discovered himself in a curious predicament, he has misplaced the password to his Coinbase account, which holds the entire bitcoin he started buying when he performed for the Golden State Warriors in 2016. Nevertheless, this has solely helped Durant’s portfolio, per his agent, Wealthy Kleiman.
In keeping with NBC Information, Kleiman addressed the scenario on Sept. 16 at CNBC’s Sport Plan convention in Los Angeles. “We’ve but to have the ability to monitor down his Coinbase account data, so we’ve by no means offered something, and this bitcoin is simply by way of the roof. It’s only a course of we haven’t been in a position to determine, however Bitcoin retains going up…so, I imply, it’s solely benefited us.”
Downside for Durant is he can’t entry his Coinbase bitcoin account. Kleiman says this has “solely benefited” Durant, as he has by no means offered any of the holdings and bitcoin’s worth has skyrocketed. Durant’s incapability to unlock the account is because of a “person error,” and he’s been working with Coinbase on restoration. Regardless of the hiccup, Kleiman notes their ongoing partnership with Coinbase by way of Thirty 5 Ventures continues to thrive.
In keeping with Kleiman, the genesis of Durant’s foray into cryptocurrency, significantly Bitcoin, was a group dinner hosted by his then-teammates who talked about bitcoin repeatedly.
The subsequent day, as Kleiman tells the story, Durant and his agent began investing in Bitcoin. On the time, it traded at a value between $360 and $1,000, however presently, it’s buying and selling at $116,000, which represents a staggering 11,000% enhance.
In keeping with a 2021 op-ed in The New York Occasions by Cornel College Professor and senior fellow on the Brookings Establishment, Eswar Prasad, Durant appears to have gotten fortunate, given cryptocurrency’s comparatively unstable nature.
He notes that regardless of its beginnings on the darkish internet, a solution to conceal illicit funds from the prying eyes of the federal authorities, it has turn into a speculative funding, which he famous puzzled him.
As well as, like synthetic intelligence, Bitcoin shouldn’t be an innocuous expertise, it too, is dangerous to the surroundings. He additionally warned that the dangers they pose to on a regular basis buyers, not multi-millionaires like Durant, far outweigh their supposed advantages.
“Paradoxically, moderately than actually democratizing finance, a few of these improvements might exacerbate inequality. Unequal monetary literacy and digital entry may end in subtle buyers garnering the advantages whereas the much less effectively off, dazzled by new applied sciences, tackle dangers they don’t absolutely comprehend,” Presad famous.
In keeping with a 2022 article by The Atlantic, which profiled Black buyers who misplaced substantial investments, the success story of Durant is an anomaly. The Black buyers they spoke to, obtained into it later than Durant, and as employees author Annie Lowrey famous, they had been pushed by the failures of extra conventional monetary holdings because it regards the fortunes of Black Individuals.
“As of 2021, Black Individuals had been extra seemingly than their white counterparts to personal crypto. They had been additionally extra more likely to personal crypto than shares or mutual funds, based on one examine from the Federal Reserve Financial institution of Kansas Metropolis. Then the crypto market fell aside,” Lowrey famous.
This cycle, based on John W. Rogers, the founding father of the mutual-fund agency Ariel Investments, and a notable Black investor, is cyclical.
“We noticed the identical factor occur with the web bubble, after we noticed many African American first-time buyers chasing sizzling web shares,” Rogers famous. “So many individuals made a lot cash during the last seven or eight years, and it’s pure to fall into the entice of chasing what labored yesterday.”
Lowrey additionally famous that buyers of all stripes want safety, however that want is probably way more acute for Black buyers who usually lack the flexibility to soak up the shocks of Bitcoin hypothesis.
“To guard particular person buyers of all races over the long run, the federal government must strictly regulate crypto within the public curiosity. (The present lack of regulation helps to maintain digital-currency hypothesis separate from the normal monetary system. Congress passing industry-friendly crypto guidelines would in some methods be the worst of each worlds.) Black households additionally want higher pathways to constructing wealth, ones supported by broad authorities funding.”
The Black Maryland IT specialist whom she spoke to for her article famous that he’s accomplished with bitcoin—however not with crypto altogether. He advised her that he nonetheless holds dogecoin, however advised her that it doesn’t maintain any actual worth for him.
“5 hundred {dollars} will get you 50 million cash,” he mentioned. “It’s purely speculative. There’s nothing of any actual worth.”
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