While the nation was in lockdown mode in the spring of 2020, the nation’s most successful private equity software investor found himself in Puerto Rico with nothing to do. Orlando Bravo, the billionaire chief of private equity firm Thoma Bravo, had left San Francisco to spend the first months of the pandemic on the island where he grew up.

Wandering around in flip flops on sandy stretches of Caribbean coastline on Puerto Rico’s north shore, Bravo found that many of the people he met were passionate about cryptocurrencies and eager to share their views. Without any in-person meetings to attend, Bravo spent a lot of time talking randomly to people about bitcoin, particularly around Dorado Beach, named for the Spanish word for “golden,” just 23 miles west of the capital of San Juan.