The “Financial Times” quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Founders Fund, a well-known venture capital firm owned by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel , had quietly sold almost all of its cryptocurrency positions, and the time was shortly before the market crashed last year. More than $1.8 billion.
Peter Thiel, who started from Paypal, was the earliest external investor in Facebook and was a loyal supporter of Bitcoin in the past. He also said that the price of Bitcoin is expected to rise by more than 100 times.
The Financial Times pointed out that the San Francisco-based Founders Fund began investing in bitcoin in early 2014, when bitcoin was trading at around $750, and then increased its holdings substantially in subsequent years. The company’s bitcoin holdings have grown to hundreds of millions of dollars. People close to the Founders Fund said about two-thirds of the fund’s capital was used to buy bitcoin.
However, people familiar with the matter broke the news that, in fact, at the end of March 2022, Founders Fund had already cleared almost all of its cryptocurrency holdings, and then in May, the UST and LUNA crashes broke out in the currency circle, triggering a major crisis in the cryptocurrency market. diving.
It is worth noting that the fund has never disclosed this operation to the outside world, and Founders Fund declined to comment on the news of the liquidation of cryptocurrency positions.
In April 2022, shortly after Founders Fund sold its cryptocurrency holdings, Peter Thiel also declared that he was very bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin.
He said at the “Bitcoin 2022 Conference” in Miami , “We are in the end of the legal currency system,” and optimistic that Bitcoin is expected to rise more than 100 times. The price per unit of the currency will exceed 4 million US dollars.
The Founders Fund currently has no significant exposure to cryptocurrencies, the people said. In this regard, analysts from the cryptocurrency research team MICA Research commented:
This means that the fund did not buy the bottom when Bitcoin fell to $16,000, but from this news, we can know that most institutions have almost cleared all their positions as early as last year, and now most of Bitcoin is only held by retail investors. Still very scattered.
