Joe Lau Net Worth, Crypto and NFT Investments

According to Forbes, the net worth of Joe Lau is estimated to be around $1.8 billion in 2023. The Chinese American has continued to enjoy a prosperous career as a tech expert. His journey in the industry saw him serve at prominent tech organizations like Google, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. During his stints with these organizations, he was instrumental in the development of numerous tech products.

However, despite his outstanding stints as a software developer with these organizations, the net worth of Joe Lau didn’t hold weight until he ventured into the blockchain industry. Before venturing into this space, he first became a subject of heavy media attention after co-founding Down To Lunch, a social network that once topped the charts on the Apps Store. The success of Down To Launch earned him a place in the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2017. However, Lau only made his fortune through a blockchain firm he founded alongside Nikil Viswanathan.

Notably, the establishment of Alchemy Pay contributed heavily to the net worth of Joe Lau. He owns 26% stake in the firm which was valued in early 2023 by investors at $10.2 billion. However, the net worth of Joe Lau has now plummeted owing to the market crisis that plunged cryptocurrencies in 2022. Recall that the crypto and blockchain landscape suffered a decline in the value of most projects owing to the crypto winter. In 2023, the situation improved as most projects have started regaining what they lost in 2022. Similarly, the net worth of Joe Lau is expected to soar owing to the recovery.

Joe Lau’s Net Worth Since 2021

Year	Net Worth
2021	$2 billion
2022	$2.4 billion
2023	$1.8 billion

Early Life

Joseph Lau was born in 1989. He’s of Chinese-American origin and notable as Joe Lau. The Chinese-American began his educational journey at Mountain View High School before proceeding to Stanford University. There, he studied computer science for his undergraduate and masters programs. While at the institution, Lau engaged in various extracurricular activities which helped him interact with many people including Nikil Viswanathan that later became an influential figure in his life.

While at Stanford, Lau was a member of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor. Also, he belonged to the Technology and Education Connecting Cultures, Undergraduate Chinese American Association, and Fellowship in Christ Group. Upon the completion of his masters program, Lau became a teaching assistant at the institution. During this period, he worked alongside Nikil Viswanathan and this collaboration served as the genesis of their long-term relationship.

While discharging their duties as teaching assistants, Joe Lau faced the challenge of teaching 100,000 (ten thousand) students at once. Due to that, he and Nikil Viswanathan wrote a code to generate PDFs with certificates of completion for all students in the class. In 2010, Lau worked with LinkedIn where he leveraged his expertise in product design to oversee and develop various innovative features for the LinkedIn Groups.

Likewise, Lau developed a proprietary Java-based framework using Spring, Hibernate, MySQL, and JUnit testing framework. While at LinkedIn, he planned and initiated a comprehensive social initiative aimed at college students. Later, in 2011, the software expert joined Google as an associate technology manager Intern. This opportunity provided him with enough experience to excel in the field. However, he later left Google to join Pinterest in 2013.

Down To Lunch

In 2015, Joe Lau and Nikhil Viswanathan decided to write a code that later became Down To Lunch. The duo were prompted to come up with the project to aid social interactions with their friends. They were dissatisfied with the difficulties encountered in reaching their friends for a hangout. In a bid to address the gap, Lau and Nikhil Viswanathan decided to equip their app with a one-button feature that could facilitate a hangout with friends just with a button. Lau’s experience across various tech firms proved pivotal in the development of the platform.

So Down To Lunch is pretty cool. Press 1 button to lunch with friends. Get it & lunch with me! http://t.co/bCsa34uria #DTL via @downtolunch

— Joe Lau (@thejoelau) May 14, 2015

Meanwhile, the project initially focused on some of their friends at Stanford. One of the factors that contributed to the success of the app was the fact it was launched at the right time. It was launched on a Friday prior to a huge party which was scheduled for Sunday. Students of Stanford then use the application to connect in preparation for the party.

The adoption showered Down To Lunch with a host of attention and widespread acceptance in less than 48 hours of its release. Gradually, its adoption began to spread to other campuses. Later, the social app began to struggle owing to the market presence of platforms like Hangster and Shortnotice. Nevertheless, it still managed to enjoy a significant level of attention.

This feat projected Down To Lunch to the pinnacle of social applications in the App Store. At the height of its prosperity, Down To Lunch was the #1 app in the App Store social category and #2 overall. It is worth mentioning that the platform was first uploaded as an Ad Hoc Beta link before its eventual launch on the App Store. A few months after the launch, prominent publications, like The New York Times, the front page of Yahoo, Forbes, Business Insider, and TechCrunch featured the app.

However, the success of Down To Lunch was short-lived. Around 2016, the platform began witnessing various complaints as regards its features. The issues impacted the adoption of the project and subsequently shifted market attention away from it. To arrest the situation, Joseph Lau and his partner sought financial support from investors.

Also, they launched a campaign to project Down To Lunch in a positive light. However, all their efforts couldn’t reignite a spark. Eventually, the project went down in the summer of 2017. It is worth mentioning that both Joseph Lau and Nikhil Viswanathan had worked on about more than seven (7) projects before Down To Launch.

Alchemy

After the collapse of Down To Lunch, Joe Lau noticed the increasing attention on crypto and blockchain innovations. Also, most of his friends except Nikhil Viswanathan were all getting involved in cryptocurrency. He then consulted Viswanathan to discuss the possibility of creating a blockchain project that will cater to the general needs and interests. As a software expert, Joe Lau tested the waters with a blockchain analytics platform for hedge funds and traders. The success of this platform convinced Nikhil Viswanathan to subscribe to Joe Lau’s suggestions.

Boom! We're going public! https://t.co/hB2sR5MMHx

— Joe Lau (@thejoelau) January 11, 2019

Meanwhile, when Joe Lau was developing the blockchain analytics solution alongside Viswanathan, they noticed how designing a blockchain application was difficult compared to creating a non-blockchain project. Also, the duo discovered that there was no tool or supporting infrastructure that could help developers simplify the process of designing a blockchain solution. Then, Joe Lau famously described the state of blockchain tooling and infrastructure as “trying to build skyscrapers with picks and shovels.”

Joe Lau then began laying the foundation for the development of Alchemy. The duo focused solely on refining the conceived idea by seeking financial support. In 2019, they organized a series A funding round despite the market downturn at that time. Luckily, the crypto market was already recovering and it eventually exploded when Alchemy launched in 2020. The recovery contributed to the success of Alchemy. At the start, Joe Lau and Nikhil Viswanathan concluded that Alchemy should focus on providing support for the development of blockchain and Web3 projects.

In a bid to actualize this, the firm gathered talents from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. He spearheaded the development of various products for Alchemy as the Chief Technology Officer. His experience in various tech organizations aided the development of various products that pushed Alchemy into the limelight. In the media, the firm enjoyed somewhat of a positive acceptance and it was dubbed the “Microsoft of Blockchain.” Due to that, the CTO retained a 26% stake for himself in the organization. Through this stake, Joe Lau has been able to build his net worth.

Joseph Lau as a Chief Technology Officer of Alchemy intended to put the firm at the heart of the blockchain sector. During this period, the blockchain market has started experiencing massive adoption, recording over $41 billion worth in investment. During this period, Alchemy inaugurated its investment arm; Alchemy Ventures. Through the investment arm, Alchemy committed $150,000 to $250,000 to startups within its ecosystem.

Excited to be talking about some of the things we've been working on! https://t.co/U3cdNWw3gZ

— Joe Lau (@thejoelau) December 10, 2018

This strategy proved pivotal to the prosperity of Alchemy and eventually the net worth of Joe Lau. By early 2023, Alchemy Ventures already invested in 84 startups across two portfolio tracks. The commitment made good returns for the firm as it hit a valuation of $10.2 billion around 2023. However, there are indications that the firm will even do better in the future. This is due to various projections that the blockchain market will spike to as high as $469.49 billion. When this happens, the market value of Alchemy will soar, and thus impact the net worth of Joe Lau.

Is Joe Lau Pro Crypto?

Just like Viswanathan, Joe Lau is also an influential personality in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain. Lau’s interest in crypto and blockchain is driven by his tech-oriented academic and professional background. His ambition has always been to venture into a space where a lot of technological progress happens. In a recent interview with Thomas Scaria, he and Viswanathan reflected on their entry into the crypto and blockchain world.

He said; “I think one thing we also saw was we saw a lot of smart friends and other engineers and builders and makers in the community that we knew jump into the space. To us, that’s always a leading indicator of where a lot of technological progress happens. So that was really, really exciting to see, too.”

Lau is a veteran in the field of technology and has brought that expertise into the space to advance crypto and blockchain offerings. His aim has always been to foster widespread adoption of cryptocurrency through the development of sophisticated blockchain infrastructures and tools for crypto hedge funds and financial institutions venturing into the space.

Driven by this aim, he resolved to collaborate with his friend, Viswanathan once more. The collaboration birthed the development of Alchemy which has helped onboard millions of users into the blockchain space. Today, some biggest names in the crypto arena, including OpenSea, Axie Infinity leverage, and a host of others use the tools provided by the platform.

“We saw an opportunity to basically build a lot of tooling around understanding what’s going on in the ecosystem, looking at the blockchain from a data-first approach, and really helping funds understand what’s going on on the blockchain, empowering investment decisions with data. That was basically the start of how we did it. Since then, we’ve been building a lot of different tools and basically intelligence products for crypto hedge funds and also, now, financial institutions with crypto departments that are coming into the space,” Lau said.

The billionaire co-founder is excited that the presence of Alchemy has helped accelerate the mainstream adoption of crypto and blockchain. He was one of those who predicted the increasing use cases of blockchain. He foresaw the application of blockchain solutions in many other industries like health, banking, gaming, and many more.

Today, his projection has started materializing, with the use cases of blockchain spreading across different sectors of the world and not showing any sign of stopping yet. Remarkably, this laudable feat triggered the market value of the blockchain market to $11.14 billion as of early 2023 and has been tipped to attain $469.49 billion by 2030.

Lau’s belief is that the industry will continue to exist irrespective of the challenges confronting it. Amid the 2022 crash in the crypto market, he was one of those who encouraged developers and investors not to give up, affirming his confidence in the capability of the industry to bounce back from the downturn.

Although the Alchemy co-founder admitted that the market crash was a scary moment for everybody, he still insisted that the situation would not spell doom on all projects or make developers lose interest. According to him, market downturns won’t stop crypto projects from getting “traction in the long term”, stressing that the people working on them “are building no matter what the prices are.”

Crypto and NFT Holdings of Joe Lau

As a prominent individual in the industry, it is not surprising that Joe Lau owns a big crypto portfolio. This explains why he ranks well on the list of crypto billionaires across the globe. Although Lau made a larger portion of his fortune by investing in the development of Alchemy and other technological apps, his crypto portfolio has also played a big role.

However, just like his friend and fellow Alchemy founder, Viswanathan, Lau is yet to publicly disclose the exact value of his personal crypto holdings and there are no indications that he would do so in the future. But, this has not stopped publications from ranking him in their list of top crypto investors or even estimating the worth of his portfolio.

Notably, the crypto portfolio of Lau is reportedly dominated by Bitcoin, the largest crypto by market cap. His first exposure to Bitcoin, according to the sources, was at the time the crypto was quite unpopular. In a 2018 interview, his fellow co-founder reflected on how he and Lau got to know about crypto.

He said; “We had seen crypto for a long time, and Mike and Yani were always like, “Crypto, crypto, crypto.” We were like, “Oh, this is cool, but we’re really focused on what we’re doing.” I think as we saw wave after wave of new excitement around the technology, there was a turning point for us last summer where we realized, “Oh, wow.” It was shifting from just being a virtual currency to a developer platform, and that’s where it really got us excited because then we saw the potential for it to have personal computer or internet scale impact because it lets you create new things that weren’t possible before.”

Lau, just like a few others, decided to take the risk of investing in Bitcoin at that time. Eventually, the risk paid off as the token registered a massive boom in its value within years, surging from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars. This development coupled with the market performance of Alchemy soared the net worth of Joe Lau.

When the crypto market was at its peak, he and Viswanathan had the same net worth of about $2.4 billion each. However, the crisis in the crypto market around 2022 plunged the net worth of the duo to $1.8 billion each. Also, the likes of Brad Garlinghouse, Mike Novogratz, Changpeng Zhao, and many other revered Bitcoin investors also lost a large portion of their fortunes to the crisis.

Meanwhile, Lau might be a believer in the potential of NFTs, but there are no indications that he owns one. He shares the same perspective with Viswanathan that the NFT market will attain greater heights in the future. This explains why the duo has continued to leverage their firm to power several NFT platforms.

Today, NFT firms like OpenSea, Nifty Gateway, SuperRare, CryptoPunks, and a few others rely on Alchemy to offer exciting services to their users. While speaking on the recent successes of Alchemy, Lau said; “every time you open DoorDash, you’re using Amazon’s infrastructure. Every time you interact with an NFT, you’re using Alchemy. It’s being powered by Alchemy underneath the hood.”

Crypto and NFT Projects Featuring Joe Lau

Joe Lau is yet to feature in any crypto or NFT projects. However, if he sustains his engagement in the space, he might be featured in Wall Street Memes in the future. Wall Street Memes is widely known for its amusing memes about events in the crypto and stock markets, such as the latest moves by Jerome Powell and Fed. In a bid to spice up the memes and facilitates impressive engagements on social media, it usually features “top guns” in those memes.

This thus explains why the meme project is now in the mainstream, enjoying the backing of a strong social media community. Apart from boasting of not less than one million supporters, Wall Street Memes has also been noticed by Elon Musk and a few other known actors in the industry. On numerous occasions, Musk reacted to posts by the project on Twitter.

🤣

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2023

It is worth establishing that the project is not only into social media memes alone. It entered into the NFT sphere around 2021 after launching a digital collectible, known as Wall St Bulls on OpenSea. Barely a few minutes after going live on the NFT marketplace, Wall St Bulls recorded impressive patronage, allowing its team to net $2.4 million. As of today, Wall Street Memes has not left the market as it recently launched not less than 420 ultra-rare Bitcoin Ordinal NFTs.

Remarkably, Wall Street Memes is enveloped with an impressive roadmap that distinguishes it from other projects. The roadmap is designed in a way that positions the project for long-term growth. According to its document, the development of the project is in three stages, namely foundation, launch, and community empowerment. In the past few years, its team invested heavily in the “foundation stage” by executing numerous strategies to establish the presence of the project.

Meanwhile, the implementation of the second stage in the roadmap commenced in May 2023. Then, it launched the presale of its token, $WSM. Just within a few months after its commencement, the token sale ranked well in the list of most influential crypto presales in the industry, netting not less than $11 million in investment. As of July 2023, the presale is still ongoing and has been tipped to attain at least $50 million very soon. Notably, its one million social media community armies have contributed to this feat.

Also, astute investors who understand that $WSM can be the next cryptocurrency to dominate the market have chosen to venture into it before it is listed on tier 1 exchanges. You can still participate in the ongoing presale and as well benefit from the $50,000 airdrop by the Wall Street Memes team. Visit wallstmemes.com for more information.

Joe Lau’s Net Worth – Our Verdict

Joe Lau’s contributions toward advancing the use cases of technologies have been amazing. He, alongside Nikil Viswanathan, is the brain behind numerous tech projects like Down To Lunch, Alchemy, and many others. However, his efforts have not gone unnoticed. Within the past few years, Lau’s projects have been featured in New York Times Business cover story, Forbes, Business Insider, TechCrunch, and a few other notable publications. He, alongside Viswanathan also featured in the 2017 list of Forbes’ “Under 30 honorees.”

Apart from media recognition, his endeavors in the industry have also earned him fortunes. He is a billionaire today because of his 26% stake in Alchemy and personal investment in crypto assets. However, he lost a large portion of his wealth to the 2022 crypto winter. Viswanathan also suffered the same fate. As of 2023, the net worth of Joe Lau, according to Forbes, is estimated to be around $1.8 billionaire.

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