On September 24,2021, eToro, a global multi-asset investment platform, announced the launching of a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) portfolio that put financial services on the blockchain.
Since its founding in 2007, the innovations by the socio-crypto trading platform has been outstanding, the question we don’t always ask is: who is the brain behind the success stories of eToro?
- Founder: Yoni Assia
- Date of Birth: March 1, 1981
- Home town: Tel Aviv
- Children: 4
- Religion: Judaism
- Nationality: Israeli
- Founding year: 2007
- Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
Education:
Yoni Assia, became a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in 1999 and attended Open University for his first degree in Management and Computer Sciences between 2003 to 2005.
Between 2005 to 2007, he was at the Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) for a Masters of Science in Computer Sciences. As one of the early believers of Blockchain technology and in crypto assets, Yoni Assia founded eToro at 25.
How eToro was birthed
Yoni has always been passionate about trading and social media. So it was an opportunity for him to embark on something unique at a time cryptocurrency (bitcoin) was just emerging.
Together with his brother, Ronen Assia and a colleague David Ring, they started off as RetailFX before the name was changed to eToro, which is now the world largest Social Investing platform.
From investing in stocks and and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) either by buying in bulk or fraction investing to trading cryptocurrencies (like bitcoin, ethereum), the platform has Contract For Difference (CFD) Trading which enables users to go long or short on FX from just 1 pip, eToro is now a network that combines all forms of digital trading.
What makes eToro unique
What makes eToro unique is the fact that users can see, follow and automatically copy the portfolios of other professional investors in within the platform while the professional trader get paid for putting his experience out for others to use under the popular investor programme.
Yoni Assia alongside his brother David Ring have grown the platform into a multi-asset brokerage company with over 10 million registered users in 140+ countries around the world.
It’s important to note that he earlier had a working experience at IDF, where he was a programmer and project manager for a number before founding his own social trading network.
Not just that, he is also the co-founder and development manager of WiTech Communications.
He also had a stint at CdRide, the world’s first and leading on-ride video technology company, specializing in dynamic thrill ride video systems.
Turning passion into a multi-million dollars platform
Yoni’s aim of designing the social trading platform was to give every investor around the world access to trade.
His two major passions finance and computer science made this possible as he came up with the investment network which is valued at $2.5 Billion, according to 2020 data.
His other projects
He has moved from founding the world largest network of trading to taking another impactful steps at touching lives by founding a non-governmental organisation in 2018 called GoodDollar Foundation.
The aim of the NGO is to “create a sustainable and scalable framework for bringing global universal basic income to the world through new digital asset technologies.”
Recognition
- Member of the YPO Global Leadership Community
- FinTech 40 ranking individuals in Financial News
- Rising Stars in Financial News Asset Management ranking
- Fortune’s 40 under 40
- City A.M’s fintech 100 top influencers
Expansion:
Growing a platform from a single office to a global platform isn’t a day job. It involves hard work and working with the right team.
With his brother and David Ring, what started as a small social trading platform now has registered offices in the United Kingdom, the United States, Cyprus, and Australia.
Latest Project:
With his team, Yoni launched DiFi, which is designed to bypass traditional financial intermediaries and putting on blockchain, meaning approval from a central authority has been removed.
The company’s DeFi portfolio has 11 crypto assets, they include:
- Algorand (ALGO)
- Ether (ETH),
- Chainlink (LINK)
- Polygon (MATIC),
- Uniswap (UNI)
- Aave (AAVE),
- Compound (COMP),
- Yearn.finance (YFI),
- Maker (MKR)
- Decentraland (MANA),
- Basic Attention Token (BAT),
Yoni, a board member of Meitav Dash, one of the biggest investment houses in the Israel, is a promising guy that will definitely be among the richest cryptocurrency billionaires in a few years to come.
He’s blockchain influencer to watch out for and we won’t be surprised by yet bigger achievement yet to come. He is hardworking, and resilient
References:
- Featured Image on rankia.com
- linkedin.com/in/yoniassia
- everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/yoni-assia
