The Roundtable King: How Mario Nawfal Became Web3’s Power Connector
From selling blenders to hosting presidents and pariahs, Mario Nawfal reinvented himself as Web3’s boldest media voice—controversial, connected, and too big to ignore.
On this page
- From Smoothies to Smart Contracts
- Early Life and First Business
- First Legal Trouble
- Entering the Crypto World
- Optimism in a Bear Market
- From Crypto to the Crowd
- The Unexpected Breakthrough
- The Birth of The Roundtable
- A Platform for Polarizing Voices
- No Censorship, No Boundaries
- Citizen Journalism or Chaos Engine?
- Embracing the Label
- Criticism from the Press
- A Lucrative Disruption
- A Meteoric Rise—With Legal Baggage
- NBC Investigation and Growing Scrutiny
- Stories from Former Associates
- Allegations and Regulatory Involvement
- Nawfal’s Response
- From the Algorithm to the Algorithm Wars
- The Crypto Oracle, Rebranded
- The Roundtable King
By 2025, Mario Nawfal is no longer just a name in crypto. He is a voice that commands audiences of hundreds of thousands, a host who has questioned presidents and platformed pariahs, a man with more daily influence on Twitter Spaces than most legacy anchors could dream of.
But his rise to the throne of alternative media was anything but clean. It is a story of hustle, ambition, scandal, strategy—and of one man’s relentless pursuit of relevance in a collapsing media landscape.
From Smoothies to Smart Contracts
Early Life and First Business
Mario Nawfal was not born in the blockchain. He was born in Lebanon in 1994 and moved to Australia at age six. By 2012, long before crypto fever gripped the world, Nawfal was building an e-commerce empire with a blender company called Froothie. He sold fruit and vegetable juicers in over 20 countries, growing the business into a multi-million dollar venture within a year.
First Legal Trouble
But success came with baggage. In 2015, Froothie was fined €6,200 by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for misleading advertising. The fine would be the first of many controversies shadowing Nawfal’s career.
Entering the Crypto World
In 2017, Mario Nawfal pivoted into crypto. He founded the International Blockchain Consulting (IBC) Group, offering advisory services in the newly emerging world of decentralized finance. By 2020, he co-founded NFT Technologies, a company aimed at helping young investors enter Web3. The company went public in May 2022 on Toronto’s NEO Exchange with a $21.8 million valuation. It closed its first day at just over $17 million.
Optimism in a Bear Market
Most companies feared public listings during the brutal crypto bear market. Not Nawfal.
We’ve got more than enough capital, and everything is really cheap. If anything, we’re in a better place,
he told Insider at the time.
From Crypto to the Crowd
The Unexpected Breakthrough
What Nawfal didn’t expect was that his biggest break would come not from a blockchain, but from a broadcast.
The Birth of The Roundtable
In 2022, he launched The Roundtable Show, a live audio chat series on Twitter Spaces. Initially focused on crypto, the show exploded after Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced FTX CEO, appeared live just as his empire was collapsing.
He did me a favor by blowing up FTX on my show. That kind of expanded to where it is today,
Nawfal said in an interview.
A Platform for Polarizing Voices
Soon, The Roundtable became a staple of Twitter’s evolving media ecosystem. Nawfal’s format was raw, unscripted, often chaotic—and it worked.
He brought in guests from all sides of the political and ideological spectrums:
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
- Hunter Biden,
- Paul Kagame,
- Andrew Tate,
- Alexander Lukashenko,
- Sergey Lavrov.
By early 2025, the show averaged 200,000 live listeners per episode and had racked up over 2 million followers on X, formerly Twitter.
No Censorship, No Boundaries
We don’t censor,
Nawfal said.
I’m apolitical. I bring people from Ukraine and from Russia, the far-right Proud Boys and Antifa. It’s not about agreeing—it’s about being heard.
Citizen Journalism or Chaos Engine?
Embracing the Label
Nawfal didn’t coin the term “citizen journalism,” but he quickly adopted it after Elon Musk used it to describe his work. The comparison is not coincidental. Nawfal is now deeply embedded in Musk’s ecosystem—often promoted by Musk, occasionally joined by him live. In one case, Musk interrupted a Tesla board meeting to drop into a space for 15 minutes—and stayed for over an hour.
Criticism from the Press
Yet critics argue that Nawfal’s brand of journalism is more spectacle than substance. Le Point, in a 2025 profile, pointed out his refusal to challenge authoritarian leaders like Lukashenko during interviews. Others see his anti-mainstream media stance as opportunistic rather than principled. “Independent doesn’t mean unbiased,” the outlet wrote.
A Lucrative Disruption
Still, Nawfal’s media instincts are sharp.
I didn’t know there’s a whole industry now of independent journalists making insane money. I had no idea journalism could be that lucrative,
he admitted.
A Meteoric Rise—With Legal Baggage
NBC Investigation and Growing Scrutiny
But behind the microphone and metrics, trouble has followed. In 2023, NBC News published an extensive investigation into Nawfal’s business past, detailing unpaid debts, broken promises, and allegations of manipulated social media growth.
Stories from Former Associates
At least seven former collaborators and investors came forward. Six said they were each owed over $10,000. One investor, a single father from Australia named James Armstrong, said he had invested $70,000—his insurance payout after being hit by a truck—and had to beg for two years to recover even part of it.
Allegations and Regulatory Involvement
He spent money as quickly as it was made. And he prioritized impact over obligations,
a former associate said.
Some of those interviewed reported Nawfal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FBI. One said he was asked by authorities to preserve chat logs and contractual agreements. Many of these documents showed investment schemes through IBC, some involving Nawfal’s own mother as a co-signatory.
Nawfal’s Response
Nawfal, for his part, denies wrongdoing.
I’ve made mistakes. And I still owe some people money. But I’m not a scammer. I’m just building in a brutal industry,
he said, pushing back on the accusations.
From the Algorithm to the Algorithm Wars
Nawfal’s rise coincides with a larger shift: the disintegration of legacy media and the ascent of algorithmic influence. As platforms like CNN and CNBC see declining viewership, figures like Nawfal offer something raw, emotional, unfiltered.
During one of his Trump-themed Spaces in 2023, the broadcast lasted 13 hours and never dipped below 8,000 live listeners at any given time.
Trump could keep us going 24/7. The media loves him—and so do the algorithms,
Nawfal laughed.
In this new media order, drama equals data, and Nawfal has mastered the formula.
The Crypto Oracle, Rebranded
Despite his turn to the media, Nawfal hasn’t left crypto behind. He continues to advise and invest, especially in Bitcoin and Web3 gaming. He believes Bitcoin is on the verge of becoming a safe-haven asset, no longer lumped in with riskier crypto tokens.
After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, we saw Bitcoin rise while everything else tanked. That was the signal.“It’s the only real alternative if the dollar starts to fall,
Nawfal said.
His concerns aren’t just financial. He’s deeply worried about regulation.
The RESTRICT Act? That’s terrifying. It could kill crypto. Or kill self-custody. And that’s the whole point of decentralization,
he warned in 2023, when the bill raised fears of sweeping government control.
Though it hasn’t been repealed, recent policy shifts under the 2025 Trump administration have eased concerns, signaling broader support for crypto and self-custody.
The Roundtable King
Love him or loathe him, Mario Nawfal has managed to do what few in crypto—or media—ever have: build a bridge between two chaotic, colliding worlds. One foot in blockchain, one foot in broadcast. He’s turned controversy into capital, and platformed figures most outlets would run from.
He isn’t a traditional journalist. He doesn’t claim to be.
I just want to give people a stage,
he tells his critics.
But in doing so, Nawfal has become something rarer: a new kind of media mogul—one who understands that in the age of algorithms, attention is power, and whoever can hold the mic longest often wins the war.
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