Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, closed nearly all of its crypto position, which it said would wait eight years, shortly before the market began to crash last year. Thiel, who is also the co-founder of PayPal, reportedly no longer has a large investment in cryptocurrencies.
Peter Thiel’s VC firm raises $1.8 billion from cryptocurrency investment
The venture capital firm made $1.8 billion in profits by selling most of its crypto investments before the market crash last year, the Financial Times reported on Jan. Known for investing in breakthrough technologies, the fund has over time taken a major position in crypto. The fund’s partners reported in March last year that they made their first Bitcoin investment in 2014 and that a large part of the portfolio consists of BTC.
Speaking to the FT, a source says that the Founders Fund, which has $11 billion in assets under management, recommended the majority of its crypto investment at the end of March 2022. Bitcoin was trading at around $41,976, down nearly 40% from the ATH level at the time. As you follow on Kriptokoin.com, BTC is currently quite far from this level…
The timing of taking profits was before the crash of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) in May, which marked the beginning of the crypto market carnage. Thiel gave a pro-Bitcoin speech just a month after his fund reportedly sold off most of its cryptocurrencies. He said the rise in the price of Bitcoin was an implication that “central banks are bankrupt” and signaled the “end of the fiat money regime”. He also spoke out against critics of bitcoin, describing billionaire investor Warren Buffett as “Enemy #1” and “a sociopathic grandfather from Omaha.”
Peter Thiel broke his word
With Bitcoin hovering near $60,000 in 2021, Thiel reportedly said this was a sign that the US political system was not stable. On that date, he said, “I’m not sure you should invest all your money in Bitcoin at $60,000 right now. But definitely $60,000 is a very promising sign,” he said.
Separately, Thiel said he felt “under-invested” in Bitcoin at an event in Miami in October 2021. He also suggested that he was a bit hesitant to invest in it because he thought “the secret is already known to everyone” and then added that “I think the answers will still take a long time” about Bitcoin.
In addition, in his 2022 statements, he included pro-bull statements such as “I trust Bitcoin, it can increase 100 times from here”. According to the Financial Times, the Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, sold all of its BTC for $ 41,976 last year and made $ 1.8 billion from it.
Finally, the Founders Fund didn’t just liquidate cryptocurrency investments. Between 2020 and 2022, the fund had eight more major exits, including Airbnb and Palantir, and the move brought back nearly $13 billion to investors, the FT reported.
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