Investors in Gensler’s favourite crypto project are the biggest losers — only 7% of them are in profit

With the crypto market taking a downturn, portfolios of crypto investors have taken a hit. But some have fared worse than others.

90% of those holding blockchain project Algorand’s native ALGO token are underwater on their investment. 2% are currently at break even, while only 7% are in profit, according to data from crypto analytics platform IntoTheBlock. ALGO is the cryptocurrency with the most holders in loss among those tracked by the platform.

Algorand is a so-called layer-1 blockchain founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, a computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The project and its founder were previously lauded by US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler during his time teaching at the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2018 and 2019.

“Silvio’s got a great technology, it has performance, you could create Uber on top of it,” Gensler said during a presentation at the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2019. Many crypto investors have taken Gensler’s comments as an endorsement of the project — more so after he became SEC Chair in 2021.

Gensler’s praise of Algorand received renewed interest last April, after an SEC lawsuit brought against crypto trading platform Bittrex argued that ALGO was a security.

Algorand has struggled in recent years and underperformed its peers. The ALGO token, which hit an all-time high of $3.56 three months after Gensler’s 2019 presentation, now trades at around $0.17 — a 95% drop.

In the same period, top cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum have rallied 612% and 860% respectively.