Alumnae/i Association of Vassar College (AAVC) Award Presentation

By Stephen Hankins ’85, P’13,’17, President of the AAVC

Thank you, President Bradley, and good afternoon to everyone who is watching this year’s Convocation, whether it’s from your dorm room on campus, or much farther afield.

As part of the Class of 1985, the proud parent of graduates from the Classes of 2013 and 2017, and a member of a family whose many connections to Vassar extend back to my great-grandmother—who was Class of 1906!—I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you, and to two groups in particular.

Class of 2024, you have just begun your Vassar experience, under circumstances none of us could have imagined a year ago. But those circumstances cannot and do not alter the fact that you have now become part of the Vassar family. We are excited that we will have the opportunity to follow your journey as Vassar students over the next four years.

Class of 2021, as you are all too keenly aware, ordinarily we would be in the Chapel, and you would be wearing your caps and gowns for the first time as you begin your senior year. Even though we cannot do that this year, you have a place of honor in this ceremony, because next May you will become Vassar’s newest graduates. When that happens, you will join nearly 40,000 Vassar alums worldwide, and as President of the Alumnae/i Association of Vassar College, better known as the AAVC, I look forward to welcoming you to our ranks.

Each year, the AAVC Board selects a recent Vassar graduate to be presented with The AAVC Young Alumnae/i Achievement or Service Award, which is given to a graduate of the last 10 years for either extraordinary service to Vassar, or for exceptional personal and professional achievements that already have had a significant impact within their chosen field.

This year’s honoree has certainly had an extraordinary impact in his chosen field—a field that barely existed when he was writing his senior thesis at Vassar as a member of the Class of 2012. Olaf Carlson-Wee was born in Minnesota and grew up near that state’s border with Fargo, North Dakota.

As a sociology major at Vassar, he decided to write about an idea that, at the time, had not been the focus of very much research in academia: Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. He quickly garnered the attention of Silicon Valley and beyond for his expertise and insight into the field of blockchain technologies and the cryptocurrency world.

After graduation, he joined the co-founders of Coinbase as the company’s first employee, becoming Head of Risk and Product Manager. In 2016, he set off on his own to start one of the first cryptocurrency hedge funds, Polychain Capital, with $5 million in venture capital. Within two years, Polychain had $1 billion in assets under management, becoming the first cryptocurrency fund to cross that threshold.

Carlson-Wee has not just been successful in his field, he helped to create it. In naming him to its annual 40 Under 40 list of the most influential young people in business in 2018, Fortune magazine called him “a true crypto OG;” the following year, the same publication dubbed him “Crypto’s Crown Prince.”

Despite those sobriquets, Carlson-Wee prefers to use the term “digital assets,” because, he says, “People got it in their mind that Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency was basically limited to money or currency. While that metaphor is perhaps useful to understand this, it’s ultimately not the full picture.”

To those who follow the financial markets, it’s no secret that Bitcoin has had its ups and downs, but its story is still being written. Just this June, the financial information platform The Tokenist discussed a survey conducted in the wake of the pandemic and the economic downturn, noting, “The results are striking. We found increased knowledge of, and growing confidence in, Bitcoin among all age and gender groups surveyed. This effect was most pronounced in millennial respondents, 45% of whom would now preferentially invest in Bitcoin over stocks, real estate, and gold.”

Part of Vassar’s heritage is the ability to visualize that which does not yet exist (think of the idea of creating a top-notch college for women in the midst of the 19th century). In recommending Carlson-Wee for this award, members of the AAVC Board’s Alumnae/i Recognition Committee wrote, “His early grasp of the importance of digital currency was brilliant, and his success at such a young age is a testament to his creativity and unwavering determination.” And also: “It’s that liberal arts mentality where there’s versatility and creativity. You can talk about anything; you have a strong view of the world. It’s not just one-dimensional, it’s multifaceted.”

Carlson-Wee himself has said he places the highest value on the friendships he made at Vassar, and offered the following advice to today’s students: “Trust your intuition, do things for your own reasons, and don’t let anyone tell you how to think or what to think about.”

On behalf of the AAVC, I am pleased to present the AAVC Young Alumnae/i Achievement Award to Olaf Carlson-Wee.