Full Tilt Co-Founder Rafe Furst is Also in the Cryptocurrency Business

Rafe Furst, one of the founders of the infamous Full Tilt Poker room is the latest to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon from the poker world - he announced the launch of his cryptocoin investment company.

Bitcoin, the alternative digital currency has very recently reached an all-time high, selling at $8,362.30 per unit on Tuesday. After over a year of the first cryptocurrency’s launch, in March 2010 one Bitcoin would equal to a mere $0.003 in value - it came quite a long way. It was the only alternative digital monetary system out there at the time, today there’s thousands - be it CloudCoin, Bytecoin, Facton or many more.

Cryptocurrency seems to be especially popular with government sceptic libertarians and professional gamblers.

Yesterday we reported on gambling magnate Calvin Ayre starting his own rival company to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash. Doug Polk had created his cryptocurrency news site earlier, while Phil Ivey and Tony G invested in cryptocoin based poker.

Now, WSOP bracelet winner and Full Tilt co-founder Rafe Furst also jumped into the Bitcoin action.

Furst made his first millions with his fantasy sports company, then moved on to be a professional poker player for 3 years which led to him co-founding the infamous late poker room, Full Tilt.

He's ready for his next big investment, however. He just launched a digital alt-currency investment firm, the Crypto Company. The company, aside from buying and selling cryptocurrency themselves, handles the transactions and gives consulting to their customers who wish to do the same. In an interview with Entrepreneur Magazine, Furst certainly did not sell short his trust in the new decentralized payment systems. 

“I think it’s the most important technology since the internet itself” - he said about cryptocurrency.

He also believes it can be a trillion-dollar market within five years.

Furts also talked about his newest endeavour in his TedX talk he gave in Charlottesville earlier this month. You can watch it below, his part starts at the 5:37:30 mark.

In his speech he shares some interesting details about his time at Full Tilt. For example, he told his audience that during the peak days of the now shut-down poker room, he was making $250,000 a month. But that came with a cost later. Being one of the co-founders, he was named as one of the defendants in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against FT, which resulted in an amount stress he could not handle: Rafe Furst ended up locked in a psych ward, for what he described as “maniacal, highly delusional behavior". 

Let’s hope that his newest venture turns out to be better for both him and the poker world.