Former crypto-billionaire insists that Bitcoin will rise to $ 250,000 within the next 18 months
Bitcoin investor Tim Draper believes the cryptocurrency is ready for an epic turnaround. His billionaire status depends on it.
Roger Kisby / redux
Venture capitalist Tim Draper believes cryptocurrency will increase more than tenfold by the end of 2023. He is not the only crypto mogul whistling in the dark.
Din an interview with Forbes in January this year, venture capitalist Tim Draper made an ambitious prediction: Bitcoin would reach as much as $ 250,000 within a year. At the time, Bitcoin was worth around $ 41,000.
“This is the year it’s going to happen,” insisted Draper, who paid $ 18.7 million at a US Marshals Service auction in 2014 for his holdings of around 30,000 bitcoins (yes, that’s $ 623 per bitcoin). “By the end of this year – or early next year.”
Suffice it to say that Draper’s prediction is not true. Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since the beginning of the year, plunging from $ 47,000 on New Year’s Day to around $ 20,000. He is one of four crypto-moguls who are no longer billionaires thanks to the digital currency crash. But Draper does not retire. Reached by email, Draper repeated his award. “I am more convinced than ever that this is happening,” he said. “At the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023.”
Easy Come, Easy Go
Since the beginning of March, these eleven people have lost the most money in crypto – a total of 61 billion dollars in the last three months. Only seven are still billionaires.
Fred Ehrsam, co-founder and former president of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, insists that market breakdown is nothing more than growing pains. “One thing most people do not fully understand: it takes years, often decades, to move from a new technology breakthrough at the infrastructure level (like crypto) to a vibrant ecosystem of mainstream applications,” twitret Ehrsam earlier this week. The 34-year-old computer is now worth an estimated $ 900 million, down from $ 2.1 billion in March.
One reason Ehrsam may have a cold head: His fortune includes around $ 367 million in cash proceeds after tax from the sale of Coinbase shares, which he unloaded last year at an average price of $ 316 per share (Coinbase is currently traded at approx. $ 52 per share). Ehrsam seems to see the market collapse as a buying opportunity: He bought $ 77 million of Coinbase shares on behalf of his crypto-venture capital and investment company, Paradigm Capital, in May, for between $ 60 and $ 73 per share.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Bitcoin investors, twin brothers and founders of the crypto-trading company Gemini, have also seen their fortunes fall, from an estimated $ 4 billion in March to $ 3.2 billion now. They laid off 10% of Gemini’s employees on June 2, referring to the “crypto winter”. But they have not let the market implosion cramp their style. Their recurring rock band, Mars Junctionis currently touring in California and in early June were the twins videotaped at a bar in Asbury Park, New Jersey with singing Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin ‘about a week after they announced Gemini’s layoffs. As of press time, tickets to the Mars Junctions show in Berkeley tonight cost $ 15 each.
While the Winklevoss twins play rock star, Sam Bankman-Fried, the richest person in crypto, goes for another role: Industry Savior. Earlier this week, the mop-headed 30-year-old founder of trading juggernaut FTX gave huge loans to troubled crypto companies: $ 250 million to crypto lender BlockFi and nearly $ 500 million (including $ 300 million in Bitcoin, of course) to brokerage firm Voyager Digital. . “We take our duty to protect the digital asset ecosystem and its customers seriously,” he said twitret. Bankman-Fred’s estimated fortune has only fallen a few billion dollars since March, from $ 24 billion to $ 20 billion, mostly thanks to FTX’s valuation of $ 32 billion from the last round of financing in January.
Meanwhile, crypto’s former richest man Changpeng Zhao (or “CZ”), founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is in a heavy-in-the-cheek mood. “I’m most bullish in bear markets,” he said twitret Thursday, which was immediately followed by another post: “No financial advice.” It may have been a joke, but CZ has good reason to offer such revelations: The SEC has opened an investigation into Binance’s first coin offering, Bloomberg reported earlier this month. CZ’s company is also under investigation by the US Department of Justice, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Internal Revenue Service (neither Binance nor CZ have been charged by any US government).
The Winklevoss twins are some of Bitcoin’s biggest investors.
Michael Prince for Forbes
Among crypto billionaires, Zhao is the biggest loser, in percentage and dollar, since March 11th. At that time, CZ’s estimated fortune of $ 65 billion made him the 19th richest person in the world. Today, he is worth an estimated $ 18.7 billion. Not that he cares in the slightest. “I do not really know what my net worth is. I do not care so much about it, he said Forbes last summer.
Michael Saylor, a true Bitcoin believer whose software company Microstrategy has spent around $ 4 billion on Bitcoin investments in recent years, has taken a different approach: going on the offensive. The 57-year-old software founder has bombarded Twitter with bullish posts, and recently made TV appearances on CNN, Fox Business and Bloomberg, where he shrugged off the concerns of the company’s balance sheet. In March, MicroStrategy borrowed $ 205 million against its own Bitcoin, to buy – you guessed it – more Bitcoin.
Saylor is now another ex-billionaire, Forbes estimates, worth just over $ 700 million. MicroStrategy’s share is down 56% since the beginning of March, compared with the Nasdaq index’s fall of 14% over the same period. But Saylor has not sold any of his precious Bitcoin – “not a satoshi”, he said CNN anchors Julia Chatterley this week, invoking a little-known term for Bitcoin’s smallest unit. (A satoshi is worth 0.00000001 BTC.)
“Bitcoin is going to survive us all,” Saylor insisted. “I’m pretty sure of that.”
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