Billionaire investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel—a one-time crypto evangelist—appears to have pulled out of the crypto market before its collapse last year.
Key Details
- The cryptocurrency markets were swept up in significant crashes between May and November 2022 due to multiple exchanges collapsing—including Terraform Labs, Celsius, Voyager, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX—and due to the overall crypto economy falling into a “Crypto Winter.” And this was after Bitcoin crashed from its historic heights in November 2021.
- Peter Thiel’s capital firm Founders Fund closed out its crypto accounts in March 2022 and earned $1.8 billion in the sale, the Financial Times reports.
- Founders Fund reportedly had invested nearly two-thirds of its investments since 2014 into Bitcoin. It currently has “no significant exposure” to cryptocurrency.
- Thiel subsequently spoke optimistically in April 2022 about the future of Bitcoin, saying, “we’re at the end of the fiat money regime.”
Why It’s News
The selling out of one of the largest and most successful figures in the crypto space is another sign of the overall cooling of the market. Thiel has historically been one of the most bullish voices in crypto, jumping on Bitcoin when the price was just $175 per coin in 2014. He’s repeatedly described crypto as a survival mechanism and a potential replacement for gold as a more solidly backed alternative to U.S. currency.
Despite the innovative possibilities of blockchain technology and web3, in addition to the Federal Reserve’s interest in a Digital Dollar, the decentralized currency had seen almost a year and a half of cooling since its peak when Bitcoin traded for over $65,000.
Bitcoin has seen a mild resurgence in the past month, increasing from its cooled price of around $16,800 in December to its current price of roughly $21,100. The collapse of the NFT market and the federal government’s repeated calls to regulate crypto reflect a market that is chilling and could face being reigned-in over the next year.
Notable Quote
“After the sale, the company has minimal exposure to the crypto market, which has seen significant losses in value. Although the company has not publicly reported the sale, as a private company, it is not obligated to do so to the SEC or any other government agency. It is unclear if Founders Fund plans to re-enter the crypto market in the future, as it has not publicly announced any intentions to do so,” says Coinopedia.
