Benzinga - Billionaire investor Tim Draper has earned the title "adventure capitalist" by betting on a series of notable tech successes, including Hotmail, Skype, SpaceX, AngelList, SolarCity, Twitter, DocuSign, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD), and Ancestry.com.
Draper was an early supporter of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and has made early predictions – which for the past eight years have turned out to be correct. In 2014, Draper predicted BTC would reach $10,000 within three years. By November 2017, it reached the $10,000 mark. In 2018, when BTC hung around $8,000, Draper predicted it would reach $250,000 by the end of 2022 or early 2023. Amid a distinctly bearish crypto market, with BTC reaching a low of around $17,000 this month, Draper has adjusted his prediction only slightly – not in terms of price, but in terms of time frame.
Draper is still expecting a BTC high of $250,000, but by the end of 2023 – rather than in Q1 2023.
Benzinga interviewed Draper regarding his predictions over the past five years, and got his take on whether recent spectacular cryptocurrency failures, like the FTX (CRYPTO: FTT) collapse, have impacted his resolve.
BZ: What's your thinking behind the $250,000 price prediction for BTC by the end of 2023?
Draper: "It's based on technological advancement, the coming halving, and ubiquitous use. Once people can buy their food, clothing, and housing with Bitcoin, there will be no reason to hold fiat. Once the governments realize that they can tax in Bitcoin for walled garden businesses, and they will never have another tax cheat, all accounts will be automatic on the blockchain. They will be able to abandon their failing and political currencies."
BZ: Will this growth in BTC be at the expense of other projects?
Draper: Yes. I don't know why anyone would still hold centralized tokens today. Decentralized tokens are auto-trust.
BZ: How are disasters like FTX going to play into the growth of BTC?
Draper: FTX helps give people more understanding of why we want to operate with a decentralized currency and why centralized systems eventually break down. I think with the FTX fiasco and the whipsaw effects on our economy from governments printing money and then having to raise rates to cover, people are finally realizing that centralized financial systems like FTX and national central banks don't work as well as decentralized systems.
BZ: Are there any other crypto projects you feel bullish on?
Draper: Any projects that are truly decentralized: Tezos, Aragon, Cardano…
BZ: Do you have any predictions for the turnaround of the crypto bear market?
Draper: Not soon.
To watch the entire interview, click below.
Cover image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay; Draper image Web Summit 2018 - Startup University, Wikimedia Commons.
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