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A month before billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel raved about the benefits of bitcoin in a speech at a conference in Miami, his VC firm, Founders Fund, has already entered cryptocurrency for eight years. was offloading bets.
Cryptocurrencies were once one of its core positions, but by March 2022, the company had generated $1.8 billion by selling most of its cryptocurrency holdings. financial times It reported, citing a person close to the fund. According to the FT, two-thirds of cryptocurrency investments consisted of Bitcoin.
The sale was timely and protected the company from a two-year low when bitcoin’s price plummeted later that year to around $15,599 last November.
However, at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami in April, Thiel did not mention the massive cryptocurrency sale of his fund. He also never wavered in his support for Bitcoin. In his speech, he said, “We are at the end of the fiat currency regime,” adding that while Bitcoin is undervalued, it “has all the potential to replace gold.”
Founders Fund declined to comment to Reuters.
Last year saw the collapse of some of the industry’s most prominent companies, including crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto exchange FTX, causing the prices of nearly all cryptocurrencies to plummet. The collapse of FTX and the criminal charges filed against its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried in particular, hurt several other companies and drew significant attention from regulators.
The San Francisco-based Founders Fund first bought bitcoin in 2014 when it traded below $1,000 and has increased its holdings over the next eight years. Thiel was also one of the first high-profile investors to put money into Bitcoin.
According to the FT, the sale of Bitcoin, as well as exits from long-term holdings such as Airbnb and Thiel-co-founded data analytics group Palantir, will see the Founders Fund invest around $13 billion between 2020 and the end of last year, according to the FT. returned home. The company manages over $11 billion.
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