Not everybody can say they have been there when historical past was being made. However former ice hockey star Trevor Koverko, on the mend from a critical automotive accident, witnessed it firsthand in his hometown.
“I used to be at a meet-up in Toronto and this man named Vitalik was handing out paperwork, which turned out to be the Ethereum whitepaper. We had a cluster of actually necessary high-profile those that got here out of that point in Toronto. Vitalik, Joe Lubin and Charles Hoskinson, for instance.”
In Canada, ice hockey is its personal form of subculture. Koverko had fallen in love with the game at a younger age, and by the point he was a teen, he was competing on the semi-pro degree and moved away from dwelling, taking part in to crowds of 10,000.
Touchdown your dream job earlier than graduating from highschool felt too good to be true. At 18, Koverko was an NHL draft choose for the New York Rangers. He had his entire life forward of him. Till he didn’t.
When he was 24, Koverko was in a critical automotive accident. He suffered a catastrophic mind harm and was paralyzed on his left facet for weeks. It abruptly ended his profession as an athlete and almost ended his life.
Six years later, in 2017, Koverko based a safety token venture – effectively earlier than tokenization was a factor – that raised $75 million and reached a $1 billion market cap. His journey into crypto was a mix of fine luck and good administration.
Koverko was within the hospital for months. He needed to study to stroll and communicate once more, whereas processing the demise of his dream. Hockey was over, and he knew he needed to reinvent himself. Then, Silicon Valley and the startup scene caught his consideration.
He enrolled in enterprise faculty and moved in along with his dad and mom to start out the lengthy street to restoration, whereas accepting that the accident had completely broken his physique. He grew to become the poster boy for the best-case state of affairs for mind accidents of that caliber.
Shopping for Bitcoin on eBay and hanging with Roger Ver
Whereas finishing his research (and feeling disconnected from the normal banking-consulting path he was taking place), he stumbled upon a discussion board that was speaking about this factor referred to as Bitcoin. These have been early days, round 2011-2012.
“It was such a pure factor as a result of nobody was earning profits. Everybody was dwelling of their dad and mom’ basement, so it wasn’t simply me. It was a hacker and libertarian neighborhood. Finally, it received extra technologically minded as time went on and other people realized the structure behind it,” he says.
In 2012, he purchased his first $20 value of Bitcoin — on eBay.
Koverko began operating with the early Bitcoin OGs, similar to Roger Ver. Splitting his time between Silicon Valley and Toronto, the ex-hockey star athlete began to see actually legit folks speaking about crypto, like Marc Andreessen. Again in Toronto, the seeds of Ethereum have been being sown by a younger Bitcoiner named Vitalik.
Toronto was the suitable place proper time for Ethereum
Enamored by the expertise and obsessive about the concept there was no large financial institution issuing the cash or insider allocation, Koverko quickly determined the normal path wasn’t for him. Now entrenched within the Toronto scene, he would attempt his hand at entrepreneurship.
There was one thing oddly liberating about this era, he tells Journal. “I had nothing to lose.”
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When Ethereum got here alongside, he realized its potential to tokenize real-world property and different monetary devices — a course of that’s nonetheless in its early phases even at present in 2025 .
“I had the thought to tokenize an present monetary asset I had, which was possession in a small personal fairness fund. I instructed a pal – Anthony Di Iorio, the co-founder of Ethereum – however he didn’t assume it was onchain sufficient and felt too TradFi. Lastly, as an alternative of constructing a tokenized fund, I got here up with the thought of constructing a protocol that allowed anybody to tokenize something,” he stated. That grew to become Polymath, the unique and largest RWA tokenization platform.
It took the higher a part of a decade for RWAs to grow to be a factor, however Koverko was directionally appropriate. Not a nasty wager for this ex-athlete’s first transfer.
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Predicting the rise of RWAs on Ethereum in 2017
When requested about how he predicted the rise of RWAs, he says he simply adopted a sample he’d observed. “Each couple of years, a brand new class would get tokenized.”
It began out as protocols, then NFTs (the primary was on Namecoin in 2014), then money by way of Tether, then gold by way of Paxos. “I noticed the early pattern of that and simply form of extrapolated it out to the place we expect it’s going,” he provides.
Polymath received off the bottom in 2017 and grew a neighborhood from day one. Figuring out they needed to play the lengthy sport, he couldn’t begin constructing tokenized goat farms or one thing cool like that. “Our thesis was to construct the piping and the infrastructure, so it permits the trillion {dollars} of issuances. We constructed the inspiration of the home, then the scaffolding, then the furnishings final,” he explains.
Tokenization has since grow to be probably the most thrilling areas, with high VCs speaking about it of their LP letters and curiosity from establishments on Wall Avenue. Polymath is within the strategy of going public.
Polymath helps tokenization on Ethereum in addition to its regulatory-compliant safety token chain, Polymath.
Robinhood and Kraken additionally made strikes into RWAs with tokenized shares this 12 months, which Koverko is a giant fan of, however expects vital pushback. “There’s quite a lot of particular pursuits that need the established order. You could have a blockchain to do all of the settlement and transferring. It’s a superior expertise that’s higher for everyone and it’s extra clear. I at all times use the Uber instance. Make it so good that when you reduce it off, folks will get pissed.”
Whereas it’s an thrilling time for Polymath, Koverko can be eager to attempt one thing new – to play a special place on a crew.
Having grown up alongside crypto, he had no scarcity of curiosities and connections. It simply so occurs that Toronto was an early hub for AI as effectively. Geoffrey Hinton’s lab was there, the place quite a lot of the co-founders of OpenAI hung out.
The large pivot from crypto to AI: It’s all Web3
Koverko took an interest within the information part of AI. “All of those fashions are being skilled on the identical information. All of the open web has been totally crawled and skilled on. For these fashions to maintain getting higher, they’ve to search out new sources of knowledge, both from present repositories of personal information or new sources of knowledge,” he explains.
Enthusiastic about the issue, he introduced in Rowan Stone, the co-founder of Coinbase’s Base, to construct Sapien – an information market leveraging cellular gaming to reinforce AI mannequin efficiency.
One of many causes OpenAI is the place it’s at present is that they have been finest at getting actually giant numbers of people to provide information and construction present information to be used in AI. “I spotted we have to go bootstrap a community of people to do it. I believed it might be the brand new type of gig work.”
AI firms get entry to the world’s largest and most various community of human information labelers. People get to play video games and earn money whereas coaching AI. It pays round $5 an hour, which is a dwelling wage in lots of elements of the world that also stay unbanked.
“Possibly, for the primary time ever, so long as you’ve an Android cellphone and web connection, there’s no poverty. Latent expertise breaks my coronary heart,” he stated.
Koverko makes use of the analogy of what number of Africans leapfrogged over landlines – going straight from no telephones to cell telephones, as a result of cell towers and WiFi are simpler to put in than copper wiring for landlines. He believes it’s the identical with crypto. “Possibly they’ll skip our crappy banking programs and go straight to web3 stuff.”
An added benefit is that enabling folks from extra various backgrounds to contribute to information labeling helps mitigate hidden biases. Koverko stated it’s not simply the kind of folks doing it, however the amount and breadth of individuals. “When you simply have just a few folks producing information, you get biases, slants and homogenous information that isn’t very dynamic.”
“If we make it extra distributed, similar to a blockchain, with nodes of parents everywhere in the world producing information, we will take the output of that information and get higher outcomes once we promote it or prepare on it,” he added.
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There’s a charitable, humanitarian nature to Koverko’s profession. He’s additionally invested in initiatives that scale back single-use microplastics, enhance entry to hashish for therapeutic functions, improve fertility and IVF outcomes, enhance the productiveness of the meals provide, and shield the setting. He additionally invests in charities, together with people who assist survivors of mind harm.
Koverko is all about main with, and leaning into, your authenticity and “pouring gasoline in your pure essence.” He’s naturally a constructive, open and trusting man, and believes his alternatives have come from proudly owning that. “That is the one factor you may management. It’s been one among my secret weapons to get by means of a number of the powerful instances.”
“Startups are rather a lot like sports activities groups. It’s a must to have a standard imaginative and prescient that transcends your particular person wants. You play for the crest on the entrance of your jersey, not the title on the again.”
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Amanda Smith
Amanda Smith is an achieved author and tradition journalist. Her potential to carry a mirror as much as society, to see each the malaise and majesty, has led to assignments with extremely revered titles similar to The Guardian, Enterprise Insider, and Nationwide Geographic. She’s coated crypto, AI and finance for CNET, NerdWallet, and MIT Know-how Evaluate. An Australian, she at present lives in New York Metropolis.