Super Mario isn’t the only one who consumes mushrooms to get more coins.
A German investor who made billions off bitcoin and other ventures has shared the secret to his success: tripping on mushrooms.
Shrooms were “the single most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” said Christian Angermayer, 43, who’s made boatloads investing in new-frontier enterprises from cryptocurrency and space travel to life extension, Bloomberg reported.
This past year alone, Angermayer’s asset management firm Apeiron Investment Group helped seven companies go public, raising more than $1 billion combined.
New additions to the mushroom-munching businessman’s portfolio include Compass Pathways, a pharmaceutical startup aiming to synthesize a depression drug from psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms. The company’s stock has doubled since it went public in September.
Putting stock in hallucinogens might sound like a half-baked scheme, but Angermayer credits psychedelics with his trip to the top.
A lifelong straight-edge guy, the finance whiz was first introduced to shrooms by British neuroscientist David Nutt, who claimed the psychotropic fungi are the least dangerous of all drugs.
Angermayer was determined to try shrooms for himself, so he went on a “trip” in the Caribbean (where magic mushrooms are legal) with a couple of close friends in 2015.
The experience was revelatory. During that moment of profound self-insight and ego-quieting, Angermayer claimed he “finally understood bitcoin.”
Shrooms may not have imbued Angermayer with “Lucy”-esque mind powers, but he does possess an uncanny knack for “recognizing trends early,” according to fellow billionaire Peter Thiel.
Bloomberg even called him the “embodiment of the new-new era of investing where once-futuristic concepts are landing funding and stocks surge on a whiff of hope.”
A man of many interests, Angermayer has also produced 21 movies, including last year’s Marcel Marceau biopic, “Resistance.”
Not all the shroom trustee’s investments have turned to gold. Stock prices of personalized cancer drug researcher Sensei Biotherapeutics, which actress Uma Thurman is reportedly also an investor in, plummeted 30% since its initial public offering in February.
The financial Kreskin also brokered some less-than-stellar deals, including one between SoftBank and German finance firm Wirecard, after which the latter went belly-up amid fraud accusations, Yahoo News reported. The Wirecard scandal reportedly involved a friend whom Angermayer had helped get on the board at Deutsche Bank, according to the report.
While there hasn’t been explicit research as to whether mushrooms can help people become investment wizards, microdoses of hallucinogens have been shown to reduce the effects of ailments ranging from depression to Alzheimer’s. As such, many states are working toward decriminalizing that class of drug. Oregon was the first to legalize psilocybin mental health treatments, in a law passed in November that also made small amounts of all drugs punishable by only a fine.