It is with great sadness that the family of Matthew Taylor Mellon II WEV89 announce his passing on April 16, 2018 at the age of 54. Matthew will be lovingly remembered by his children Araminta, Force, and Olympia, as well as his former wives Tamara Mellon and Nicole Hanley Pickett, his mother Anne Bright and stepfather Reeve Bright, by his sister, Andrea Geyer, his brothers Chris Mellon, Henry Mellon, and Nicholas Bright and his brother-in-law Gessner Geyer and sisters-in-law Laurie Mellon, Elizabeth Mellon and Amanda Anderson Bright. Matthew was predeceased by his father Karl Mellon.
Born in New York City, Matthew was raised in Delray Beach, Florida and Northeast Harbor, Maine. A descendant of Mellon Bank founder Judge Thomas Mellon and American banker and Drexel University founder Anthony Joseph Drexel, Matthew graduated from the Wharton School and went on to become a billionaire businessman and entrepreneur. His accomplishments and achievements were numerous and spanned across many industries, which is not surprising to those who knew him given his larger than life personality.
Matthew began to make a name for himself in the fashion industry in 1999 while married to Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon. Matthew acted as co-creative director at Jimmy Choo designing a men’s line for the luxury shoe company. In 2000 Matthew founded Harrys of London out of necessity—he loved to wear sneakers but needed something for dressier occasions, and his line was the first to incorporate athletic shoe technology into men’s dress shoes. In 2008, with then-wife Nicole Hanley, they created Hanley Mellon. Drawing from inspiration from their world travels they launched their first women’s ready to wear line in 2014. A fixture on the New York City social scene Matthew was also a staunch republican. He took an active role in politics acting as the Chairman of the Finance Committee for the New York Republican State Committee from 2011-2013.
In recent years Matthew found a new passion, crypto currency. Banking and investing was in his blood and his intuition paid off as he amassed a fortune virtually overnight. Matthew began his venture into crypto currency with Bitcoin Incubator. Putting his brilliant mind to use Matthew co-founded Coin Validation with the intent of educating banks and congress about virtual currencies. Coin Validation was founded with the sole intent of addressing the question, “How do Bitcoin businesses achieve regulatory compliance within the United States?” He also acted as President and co-founder of Coin Co. a New York based software technology and cryptography incubator. By May 2015 a new crypto caught his eye and Matthew went on to become Global Ambassador of Ripple Labs (XRP). Ripple Labs (formerly OpenCoin) developed the Ripple protocol using a team to contribute code to the open-source software and work with financial institutions and payment networks to accelerate the growth of the protocol. Investing in Ripple, Matthew was able to turn a $2 million investment into a billion dollars.
Matthew was full of love and life. Matthew truly had a heart of gold and lived without judgment and would go out of his way to help a friend in need. Matthew appreciated both the small things and the extravagant. He was a lover of art and music and truly indulged in those things. As a world traveler he had been to nearly all the far corners of the world taking in other cultures, learning from them and using those things to shape the beautiful and bright spirit that was Matthew Mellon. The world is a lesser place with his loss and his presence will be greatly missed.
