Eight years ago, this encryption billionaire went all in on Ethereum and became fascinated with longevity science.

Written by Ashlee Vance, translated by Luffy, Foresight News

In early April, James Fickel boarded a train from Boston to New Haven, Connecticut, to examine a batch of animal (pig) brains. The brains are placed in rows of vats in a building on the edge of Yale's campus, connected to a mass of intertwined tubes and several machines that deliver nutrient-rich fluids to the brains. Researchers have long dreamed of studying brains that function outside the body, and this device makes that dream a reality.

James Fickel. Picture Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

A few years ago, the work of Croatian scientists Nenad Sestan and Zvonimir Vrselja opened the way for brain research. In 2019, they announced that they had restored pig brain cell activity for up to four hours after slaughtering a pig in a meat processing plant. This news made headlines in major media outlets. Since then, this scientific research has evolved from a research project to a startup called Bexorg Inc. The company hopes that their technology (also used for donated human brains) will allow people to better understand the biological principles of the brain, develop better drugs, and possibly provide science fiction-like recovery technologies for people who have suffered brain trauma. As an early investor, Fickel has made significant contributions to this work.

Fickel's involvement in Bexorg was an unexpected experience. After successful investments in Crypto Assets, he quietly became one of the world's largest sponsors of longevity science and advanced brain research. Fickel has invested over $200 million in various startups and university research labs with the goal of extending human healthspan and preparing for the coexistence of humans and artificial intelligence. He often invests alongside well-known and wealthy philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt. This is the first time he has publicly discussed his work in this field.

The refrigerator in the Bexorg research laboratory in New Haven contains canned pig brains. Image source: Bloomberg Businessweek.

Fickel's extraordinary journey began in 2016 when the 25-year-old Fickel invested all the $400,000 he earned from software development and stock trading into the emerging cryptocurrency Ethereum. At that time, Ethereum was a little-known token with a trading price of about 80 cents. Today, Ethereum has become one of the well-known crypto assets, with a single token worth over $3,000. With this investment alone, Fickel has become a billionaire.

Crypto Assets tycoons are usually known for their revelry in tax havens and the ensuing financial frenzy. Fickel's only previous appearance in mainstream media was in 2018 when The New York Times featured him in an article titled 'Everyone is getting very rich but you'. He was pictured with his cat Bigglesworth and described as an apostle of the populist Digital Money movement. The article also recounted an anecdote of Fickel's personal trainer making a fortune by following his trading advice.

Fickel has a great sense of fashion and occasionally likes to party, but he is not like typical Cryptocurrency enthusiasts. He is more inclined towards the intelligence aspect of Cryptocurrency. He funded academic research on the Fluctuation of ETH transaction prices, including a paper published by Professor Timothy Roughgarden at Columbia University in 2020, who is a cutting-edge researcher in the field of Algorithmic Game Theory. This paper played a role in stabilizing ETH transaction fees and curbing the inflation trend of ETH.

When the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, Fickel suddenly became tired of the Crypto Assets industry. In order to find a more comfortable place to spend the pandemic and avoid paying state income taxes, he moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas in 2020. 'I decided to be a monk for a while, I read a lot of books,' Fickel said. He is tall and thin, and can be described as a casual futurist. 'I have been in the Crypto Assets industry for a long time, now I need to think about some different things.'

In Texas, he read works by longevity masters such as Nir Barzilai and Aubrey de Grey, and then turned to more in-depth scientific texts, finding some seasoned researchers who seem to believe that significant breakthroughs in longevity are imminent. This is more appealing than the new hobby of many cryptocurrency enthusiasts (such as Non-fungible Tokens NFT), which Fickel finds absurd. He decided to become an investor and philanthropist, and began emailing startup founders to introduce himself and see if they were willing to offer advice on how to allocate funds. As expected, the founders were delighted to receive his emails.

By 2021, Fickel decided to formally invest in and engage in charitable activities. (Translator's note: James Fickel is currently an active Cryptocurrency trading Whale, and his on-chain Wallet often experiences large transfers and trading activities.) He founded the Amaranth Foundation and hired a young student, Alex Colville, who was still pursuing a Ph.D. in genetics at Stanford University, as his primary investment partner. They began interviewing dozens of researchers and startups, and reading a large number of papers. Although Fickel lacked an academic background, he was highly efficient in his learning and quickly able to engage in in-depth discussions with scientists and assess whose work had the most potential.

In the 18 months after Amaranth was established, Fickel's company invested $100 million, with 70% going to startups and the rest used for academic lunar landing programs. Amaranth invested in approximately 30 companies and research groups. Fickel's initial investments included Cellular Longevity Inc (which developed drugs to help dogs live longer), Cyclarity Therapeutics Inc (which is researching therapies to reverse arterial plaque buildup and prevent heart disease), and LIfT BioSciences (which is developing novel cells to destroy cancerous tumors). Today, he is the biggest supporter of age1, a venture capital fund focused on longevity science co-founded by Colville and renowned investor Laura Deming in the field.

For those who have made a fortune in the Cryptocurrency field, Fickel has a high tolerance for risks that other investors may avoid, which is perhaps natural. His interest in Magic Lifescience located in Mountain View, California, illustrates this point. The company was founded in 2021 and uses technology developed by Stanford University for many years to manufacture a toaster-sized machine that can diagnose a variety of diseases from small samples of urine, saliva, and blood. Similar to the infamous diagnostic startup Theranos, the company faces significant funding challenges. These challenges did not bother Fickel, who led Magic's first round of financing.

Early on, the Amaranth Foundation provided funding to individuals working in the field of Alzheimer's disease and mental health, and then delved into the field of neuroscience. In addition to Bexorg, Fickel also funded organizations such as E11 Bio, which is developing new brain mapping technology, and Forest Neurotech, which manufactures and launches brain implants that emit ultrasonic pulses for studying the causes of mental health disorders and neurological diseases. The foundation's latest investment is a $30 million investment in a secret project called Enigma at Stanford University, which is building an ambitious model of brain structure and detailing the activity of each neuron throughout the brain.

Fickel said that his interest in the Enigma project partly lies in the possibility of creating a digital representation of the brain, which can help train artificial intelligence systems. Once people have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of the human brain, they can use this knowledge to digitally create an artificial brain and use the associated data and AI models to gain a more comprehensive understanding of our thinking and deeply rooted values. If lucky, this may lead to a safer integration of humans and machines in the coming years. Fickel said, 'When we transfer capabilities in one dimension or another, we really don't know what is safe and what is unsafe. We need to figure out how to give artificial intelligence similar values and representations as humans and bind the models with our capabilities until we can safely design more powerful thinking.'

Zvonimir Vrselja sits in a laboratory at Yale University. Image source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Back at Bexorg, scientist Vrselja is moving through rows of brain-filled buckets. Beside him are Fickel and Joanne Peng, the latter having transferred from Colville to become Amaranth's new Chief of Staff after age1. Peng, who is 24 years old, is another biotech prodigy who took two years off from school to compete for the Thiel Scholarship. While completing her studies at Princeton University, Peng helped Fickel invest his vast fortune.

Vrselja attempted to showcase all the progress made by the startup since Fickel's last visit a year ago. 'Everything you see - the code, hardware, software, liquids, everything - is made by us,' he said. This technology should be able to test compounds and their effects on the brain in new ways by providing alternative solutions for human trials in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Currently, the only way to include humans in drug testing is through years of animal testing, which is expensive and challenging. 'Drug development is difficult, and developing brain drugs is even more challenging,' Vrselja said.

Bexorg's customized blood substitute. Image source: Bloomberg Businessweek

However, with the Bexorg system, the brains of patients with diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's seem to maintain certain functions. The company states that while the cells in these brains are still active, the neurons stop firing, so they are not conscious. This is certainly different from clinical trials, but the hope is that early testing of the brain will save time and money, making it easier to identify which areas are worth exploring early in the drug development process.

"I'm not a physicist or a neuroscientist," Fickel said of his investment philosophy. "What I'm trying to do is work with these top scientists to build a higher level of abstraction of a psychological model and then push for the changes I want to see in the world."