Chatting with Bitcoin Maximalist Tim Draper

Updated November 3 with additional offers

What will bring crypto back to the dizzying heights of November 2021, when – briefly – a single Bitcoin cost $65,000 USD? Maybe it’s women, suggests OG venture capitalist and well-known cryptocurrency cheerleader Tim Draper.

“In the long run, it’s going to be about the women,” Draper told me today at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. “Women control 80% of retail spending, and they’re only one in six Bitcoin wallets.”

He may be right.

Women represent a lucrative and underserved market for fintech service providers, says Leigh Cuen, technology writer and co-author of a research report on crypto and women. Her research indicates that women who use crypto typically use it for four main purposes: savings, freelance income, and gaining valuable skills in a growing field.

Another core reason Cuen cites: freedom.

“Anything that allows us to have control over money and the value of our work is important,” said a woman in Venezuela. “It is the possibility of having money saved without going through the hands of the man and without having to go to the bank to sign.”

The current slide for crypto in general and Bitcoin specifically has been painful for HODLers, the true believers who have bought and continue to buy Bitcoin. The original and still most valuable cryptocurrency is now trading around $20,000, having lost more than half of its value.

Their faith will be rewarded, Draper suggests, when people finally start to get it.

“The HODLers, the passionate people who realize that Bitcoin is an anthropological leap forward, they’re the ones who buy now and hang in there.”

The people who caused both the spike and the crash?

Speculators who bought into the boom and dumped it all at the same time as they sold off their technology stocks, says Draper.

Women – and retailers – will be at the forefront of Bitcoin’s return to greatness, he says.

“When the retailers realize they can save 2% by accepting bitcoin, and when women realize they get their food, clothing and shelter in bitcoin, they won’t want government coins,” says Draper. They want bitcoin, they want something that’s decentralized, open, transparent, global … they want a currency that’s just better, that will go up in value … versus one that you have to get rid of.”

Retailers certainly want to save money, which is why the EU has capped credit card fees, and legislation is currently under consideration in the US to do something similar. And people generally want to save money too.

Whether women in general – or non-crypto participants in general – care about decentralization or non-sovereign currencies, only time will tell. What is clear, however, is that many female crypto buyers own Bitcoin not primarily for retail, but for the same reason as many men in the space: the opportunity for financial growth, plus risk management from the fiat currency economy.

“Portfolio diversification,” says entrepreneur Katherine Champagne when I ask why she holds Bitcoin. When it comes to growth for the future, she is open to options: “How do you define the future? Five years? Ten years? I wouldn’t hold it if I didn’t think I would get some return…”

There has certainly been an increase in women engaging with crypto recently: Indian exchange BuyUcoin recorded a rise of around 140% this year among female users, while Australian exchange BTC Market said female participation jumped 172%, compared to just 80% for me.

If that continues, Draper may have a point. More people in the area – regardless of gender – means more buyers, more users and more growth.

The other force that Draper believes will propel Bitcoin into the future?

The inflation that is plaguing much of the world right now.

“Bitcoin will start to be recognized as an inflation hedge,” he says. “I remember my father giving me $1,000,000 in Confederate dollars. I said ‘How much is this worth?’ and he started laughing … ‘it’s not worth anything.'”

Fiat currencies are going to go that way, says Draper.

Which, if true, means that the US dollar, euro and other major currencies will continue to be devalued. And if that happens, people may actually flee to crypto. Hopefully, for the billions of people whose lives depend on reliable and accessible currencies to live their lives, this prediction does not pan out.

If people are fleeing to crypto, it will most likely be for very simple, prosaic and sane reasons:

“Bitcoin, for me, has not been about posting crap on Twitter and flexing my maximalist muscles,” Allie Eve Knox says in a Cita Press report. “It has strictly been about getting paid in a safe and fast way. That’s what bitcoin is to me. It’s the money I use to put food on the table, not to stroke my ‘hard money’ ego.”