Danny Maegaard: How Australian man turned $4,000 into MILLIONS with cryptocurrency

A part-time service station attendant’s decision to surf the web instead of doing his uni assignment began a head-spinning journey to becoming a cult crypto currency investor and globetrotting influencer.

At 22, Danny Maegaard was procrastinating on his psychology essay for Sunshine Coast University, when he became distracted by an online article about Bitcoin.

Now Mr Maegaard is worth a fortune after making $10million by hedging bets on various cryptocurrencies for four years, then building a collection of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) worth at least $12million – which he hopes could be worth $100million ‘one day’.

‘While I was at university studying psychology, I just found myself procrastinating on assignments and taskwork,’ Mr Maegaard said. 

‘I basically came across an article while I was procrastinating, it was talking about a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. It had just gone from $15 to $30 something really caught my eye about it.

‘I delved deeper and went on to a Bitcoin forum. After I started doing some homework, I realised this could potentially revolutionise the whole financial system.’

After researching the new subject, Maegaard decided to plunge every cent of his $4,000 savings from stacking shelves in a petrol station, into bitcoin.

‘Everyone thought I was crazy,’ he says. ‘But my philosophy was that this was the time for me to take risks — when I was young and didn’t have responsibilities like a mortgage, kids, and bills to pay.’

By the end of his first year investing in bitcoin, the currency has increased in value nearly 10 times.

Over the next four years he invested in various altcoins — a term used to refer to any cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin —  and sold out making $600,000 in 2017 to buy a house.

After finishing his degree in psychology, he moved onto study law. But an old reluctance to do a nine-to-five job resurfaced and he quit plans for a law career – upsetting his lawyer father.

‘I really loved the idea of play to earn, being able to make an income online. Who doesn’t want to be able to make an income online?,’ he told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘Everyone’s trying to do it, being an influencer, or writing a blog.’

Mr Maegaard admits his parents didn’t understand it.  

Maegaard went onto work fulltime in cryptocurrency investing and in a stroke of brilliance, he cashed out with almost $10million before Bitcoin reached its peak.

He admits he got out of crypto when it became so mainstream that his grandma called to ask his advice on investing.

‘Random people, like my grandma, started calling me and asking me about Bitcoin,’ Maegaard recalls. ‘It was reaching a saturation point, and I knew it was time to exit.’

After making a fortune in Bitcoin, Maegaard turned his focus to NFTs in late 2018, just before they gained popularity in the mainstream.

Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, NFTs are non-fungible, meaning that one cannot be exchanged for another. The digital assets have collectors value, and can represent items including still images, GIFs, videos, music and more.  

‘People thought I was an absolute madman,’ he says. ‘I don’t think a lot of people could understand how, or why, one of these would be worth thousands of dollars.’ 

Now speculators ‘flip’ their NFTs for eye-watering profits within days or even hours.  

‘I just thought this is going to be a brilliant way to be literally sitting on a beach in Mexico or anywhere, as long as they’ve got an internet connection, they can harvest resources within a game world, and then sell that to someone who needs those resources.’

Today, Mr Maegaard is a high profile NFT collector under the username Seedphrase, with more than 120,000 followers on Twitter.

His profile picture is of one of his favourite NFTs, CryptoPunk #8348 – which he paid $18,000 for less than a year ago and has been offered $4.2million for since.

His incredible fortune has allowed him to travel the world, and he shares photos of his glamorous lifestyle on social media.

Photos show him playing falconer in Dubai, hiking in Norway and at Machu Piccu in Peru, then with his feet dangling out of a helicopter above Manhattan and admiring the Swiss alps from his infinity pool.

Despite Mr Maegaard’s success in bitcoin, Australia’s most powerful banker recently issued a chilling warning about cryptocurrencies as the government cracks down on decentralised finance.

The volatility of the currency – falling below $70,000 recently, almost triple the value of a year ago – prompted Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe to urge investors to be careful about investing in cryptocurrencies.

 ‘Anyone purchasing these assets should take care,’ he told the Australian Payments Network Summit.

‘There is still a lot of uncertainty about the long-term usefulness of these assets,’ he warned.

‘Before investing, it is best to understand fully the underlying value proposition.’

Last month Tony Richards, the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s payments policy section, warned cryptocurrency prices could crash.

‘There are plausible scenarios where a range of factors could come together to significantly challenge the current fervour for cryptocurrencies, so that the current speculative demand could begin to reverse, and much of the price increases of recent years could be unwound,’ he said.

‘Households might be less influenced by fads and a fear of missing out and might start to pay more attention to the warnings of securities regulators and consumer protection agencies in many countries about the risks of investing in something with no issuer, no backing and highly uncertain value.’