WSJ: Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Make Monster Bet on Bitcoin
Founders Fund, the venture-capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars of the volatile cryptocurrency, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
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Exerpts from the Wall Street Journal included:
The bet has been spread across several of the firm’s most recent funds, the people said, including one that began investing in mid-2017 and made Bitcoin one of its first investments.
The bitcoin bet is quickly showing promise. Founders bought around $15 million to $20 million in Bitcoin, and it has told investors the firm’s haul is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars after the digital currency’s ripping rise in the past year.
Mr. Thiel made the decision to buy up bitcoin together with Founders’ other investment partners, a person familiar with the matter said. By buying bitcoin outright, as opposed to backing other companies doing business in the space, Founders would seem to be breaking with its investing tradition, an investor said. But in communications with investors, Founders representatives have sought to cast the investment as a high-risk, high-reward wager similar to its other venture bets, the people familiar with the matter said.
It was not immediately known if the founders had sold any Bitcoin.
Thiel, a strong supporter of US President Donald Trump from the beginning as well as a co-founder of PayPal, is among the few mainstream investors promoting Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.
Bitcoin was trading at 14976.44 US Dollars as of Tuesday afternoon.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
