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The endowment fund of Duke University, the alma mater of Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, was one of the fortunate few to have made an early investment in the soon-to-list cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDesk has learned.
Two people familiar with the matter said the $3.9 billion Duke Endowment was included early on in the cap table of Coinbase, which is expected to command a price tag of around $100 billion when its shares debut on Nasdaq. Those shares are now worth a small fortune, on the order of nine figures, the sources said.
“The Duke University endowment has direct Coinbase exposure because Fred [Ehrsam] approached Duke for one of the early rounds,” said a source who was part of the venture capital community at that time. “They probably 100x’d their money, after dilution. So even if they only put in $5 million, they just made $500 million, which is a lot for an endowment.”
Coinbase declined to comment. Duke Endowment did not immediately return requests for comment.