Popular venture capitalist investor and billionaire Bitcoin bull Tim Draper
Popular venture capitalist investor and billionaire Bitcoin bull Tim Draper is seemingly undeterred from his position even after the bearish crypto market trend of 2018, stressing on the fact that he still believes that “Bitcoin’s revolution is only just beginning.”
Mr Draper explained that he first got interested in trading Bitcoin around the same time that the Mt. Gox disaster hit the crypto space. He said that he was “flabbergasted and fascinated” when he saw that Bitcoin had only fell by about 10 to 15% during the collapse:
“I thought virtual currency was really going to take off. We were going to have this new kind of currency and it was going to be awesome and I thought Mt. Gox’s collapse was going to be the end of it. But Bitcoin only dropped about 10% or 15% that day.”
The event made Draper realise just how strong Bitcoin’s demand was, and how resillient it had to be to not be affected by thefts on a scale as big as that. As such, he started buying little amounts of Bitcoin at a time, accumulating his digital wealth over time.
After the disaster that Mt. Gox was, Draper ran into another opportunity to get involved in the Bitcoin community. He ended up buying Bitcoin at the US Marshals’ auctions in 2014. The US Marshals had seized 144,336 Bitcoins from the operators of Silk Road, and put them all up for auction.
At a time when the market price for Bitcoin was around 6 US Dollars, the auction bidders consisted mostly of venture capitalists such as himself, who were similaly looking to make a profit by “buying low, selling high.”
Mr Draper went on to express his thoughts on the matter:
“I thought: You know, if I want this stuff I might as well bid above market. Here was my thinking: Either this thing goes to nothing and — you know, too bad — or it goes sky-high and nobody’s going to care that I paid 5% more for it.”
He points out that many industries looking to adopt this new form of currency will have to go through some changes to accomodate the addition of this new currency. More importantly, people will have to start getting rid of theri traditoinal methods of trusting banks and other third parties with their money and come to terms with the fact that their holdings are now being monitored by computers through the Blockchain.
In November Draper reiterated his belief that 1 BTC will be worth $250,000 by 2023.
“I have a pretty good sense of what’s going on four, five, six ten years from now because that’s my business – to meet with young entrepreneurs who are putting a future into my mind”, Mr Draper said.