Today’s Blockchain Trailblazer is William E. Quigley, an absolute must-have for anyone close to the blockchain and crypto market. He’s the co-founder of Tether (USDT), the most used stablecoin and, closer to Social Miners, co-founder of WAX, a blockchain that’s most recognized for its NFT Marketplace and host of WEB3 games.

Quigley is an extraordinary entrepreneur, a digital world pioneer in the truest sense of the word, having been close to concepts such as digital money and virtual commerce long before blockchain, having pioneered the digital world since Web1.0. 

Let's review the path that made William E. Quigley a blockchain pioneer as we get to know him better. 

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From Papers to Disney

You could say he was a born entrepreneur. Or it is the natural result of having to earn money early to survive in the difficult economic conditions of the 70s with 11 siblings and a single mother. However, his ability to see and improve the conditions started to attract attention at the age of 9-10. Developing his newspaper delivery business, which was very common in those years, the young William realized that he could multiply his earnings if he could buy a motorcycle. So he increased the number of houses he delivered newspapers to from 30 to 220.

Quigley's entrepreneurial inclination led him to study Accounting, which he describes as “the language of business” to better understand finance, and he graduated with a degree from USC.

He first became an auditor in the banking industry, auditing Japanese bank agents and in the late 80s, during what was described as a “once-in-a-century” financial crisis, he focused on examining Savings and Loans.

He realized he needed an MBA to start his own venture capital firm and attended Harvard Business School. In 1990, he continued his career in the entertainment industry and went to work for Disney.  At Disney, he had experienced the importance of Branding for businesses. It was during this period that he acquired the final tools he needed to move into the venture capital business that would define his future.

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Payments as a Key 

Recognizing the potential of the internet as a multi-provider for digital services and long before he got involved in blockchain, he was a managing director at Idealab Capital Partners (ICP), the world's first consumer venture capital firm. Then, he co-founded Clearstone Capital Partner, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage communications and consumer technology companies.

Like every pioneer, William saw the future in the digital world of his time and entered this field without fear and with determination. The Key problem was Payments. 

Lack of Trust was an issue on the internet, with people's reluctance to give their credit card information, and other payment-related problems pushed alternative technologies such as blockchain. In those days, PayPal offered a solution to the problem, and Quigley and his partners became PayPal's first institutional investors in the 2000s.

But it was through his partner that he was introduced to a more important concept. In 1998, he was on the board of directors of Internet Gaming Entertainment, a company his partner had founded that offered virtual trading of video games.

Those were the first moments when he thought about the concept of Internet Money. 

By 2013, he also invested in NetZero, MP3.com (now soundcloud.com) and Goto.com through this $700 million firm. By then, Quigley established the VC concept applied to Internet-based firms and the need for a venture capital firm long before blockchain, which we often hear about in relation to crypto projects.

The idea of Bitcoin came up again when he was helping a girlfriend whose opinion he respected to open a video product virtual commerce business in Singapore. ICP was set up to finance internet startups, so we can say that his pioneering in the field started from Web1.0 with the new concept of  the Business Incubator. 

Quigley's words below describe almost the common character of Blockchain Trailblazers:

“A lot of us in crypto came from backgrounds where you have to be scrappy and were able to turn perseverance and hard work into something.” This ethos lends itself to a strong appreciation for Bitcoin and crypto in general, he says. It’s a grassroots entrepreneurial-inspired environment, very similar to the growth of the Internet in its early days.

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Creating Tether and  WAX

For a time, PayPal became the alternative to Credit Cards, although Quigley was more into a full digital platform without involving fiat money. After all, Credit Cards and/or accessing money online does not make it digital money, and he saw a solution in the distributed ledger systems of the blockchain technology.

With the concept of Tokenization deepening in the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency, Quigley began to think about how it could revolutionize not just digital asset trading, but any asset that could be represented digitally. The potential for NFTs to unlock value and create new markets was enormous and was now fully participating in the crypto revolution. 

From wallets to marketplaces to DeFi, Quigley pushed the boundaries of what could be done with blockchain technology. He made the most important leap that we all take for granted when trading in the crypto market, developing the concept of stablecoins in 2014 and co-creating Tether, the first stable coin of cryptocurrency.

Today, all assets in the crypto market have their equivalent in USDT. And until the introduction of USDT, swapping each token for another token could mean a long time and significant losses in value. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that USDT is the gateway to mass adoption, through which we have reached today's values.

Today, USDT is by far the most widely used coin in the crypto market. And its market capitalization has already surpassed $100 billion.

For Quigley, 2017 was the year he launched another major project. Backed by the DAO Labs Social mining community, WAX is a blockchain designed to make e-commerce transactions faster, simpler and more secure for all parties involved.

It supports mass adoption of blockchain with user-friendly marketplace platforms, especially for web3 games and NFTs.

W.E.Q. believes that the potential of NFTs has yet to be reached. 

“NFTs are much more than what people see. In 2021, the majority saw NFTs as a media file, whereas NFTs are virtual computers with a specialized feature set. This virtual computer can be electronically transferred anywhere in the world, and the recipient can verify that the underlying software has not been modified. NFTs are a form of identity that cannot be forged or counterfeited.” He said.

Quigley predicts that governments will use NFTs as a form of identification. He also believes that as more companies understand that NFTs are programmable objects that can be sent and stored in a wallet, they will use them for more creative opportunities.

With more than 20 years of experience, he is now trying to predict when, not if, the entire financial system globally will start using tokens.

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