Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm reportedly made $1.8 billion closing out its crypto positions last year – around the time when the early bitcoin bull was still predicting the token’s price to surge 100 times.
Founders Fund had cashed out almost all of its bets on digital assets by March 2022, according to a Financial Times report that cited people familiar with the matter.
But Thiel was still backing bitcoin when he spoke at a crypto conference in Miami the following month.
“We’re at the end of the fiat money regime,” he said, adding that the token’s price could increase 100-fold from its level at the time of $44,000.
That prediction was proven false as rising interest rates and failures of high-profile firms like Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital and FTX dragged the crypto sector into a prolonged slump. Bitcoin plummeted over 60% in 2022 and was trading at under $17,000 by the end of the year.
Founders Fund first started pouring money into crypto in 2014 – when bitcoin was trading at around $750. By the time bitcoin reached its all-time high in November 2021, it had surged 8,500% from that level.
Thiel has a long track record as one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent tech investors.
He took early stakes in start-ups including Facebook, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and ride-hailing app Lyft, and co-founded PayPal in 1998.
Thiel is also a high-profile supporter of the Republican party and has continued to voice his support for Donald Trump since the former president left office in January 2021.
The fund held around two-thirds of its portfolio in the token at one time but now has no significant exposure to crypto, according to the FT’s sources.
Founders Fund did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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