Tim Draper, by far the most successful early stage bitcoin supporter amongst mainstream investors, has already made over US$16 million in his investment in bitcoin alone.
Since 2014, Draper focused on providing necessary early stage investment to companies building infrastructure for daily traders and users. While the vast majority of billionaire investors were skeptical towards bitcoin and companies within the industry, Draper granted startups with full financial and strategic support.
Apart from purchasing tens of thousands of bitcoins at auctions and on bitcoin exchanges, Draper funded regional companies like Coinplug of South Korea since three years ago. In April 0f 2014, when startups including Coinplug were struggling to appeal to high profile investors and companies, Draper provided necessary resources and capital to bitcoin startups to develop their brand, secure a nationwide userbase and expand their services.
Draper particularly focused on the Asian bitcoin market, observing a surge of interest towards bitcoin in leading Asian countries like South Korea. China, Japan, Korea and other countries are normally doubtful of technologies or assets which don’t follow the traditional norm and standard. However, Draper took the risk of investing in another South Korean bitcoin company in Korbit, expecting the Korean bitcoin exchange market to explode.
Just a year after the investment of Draper, his vision started to come alive. Korbit secured investments of $83 billion from Japanese firm Softbank and South Korea’s largest telecommunications company SK Telecom, another multi-billion dollar conglomerate.
On the side, Draper was also purchasing as many bitcoins as he could at auctions. Over the past few years, Draper won several large bitcoin auctions, including the Silk Road auction, in which he won around 32,000 bitcoins.
At the time of the auction, 30,000 bitcoins were valued at $18 million in total, at $650 per bitcoin. Relative to bitcoin price at the time of writing, Draper nearly doubled his investment, profiting $16 million from a $18 million investment.
As a bitcoin investor and supporter of early stage startups, Draper used his reserve of bitcoin to grant funds to his son Adam Draper’s virtual reality, blockchain and bitcoin venture capital firm Boost VC graduates.
In 2014, Draper gave startups which graduated the Boost VC startup incubator and acceleration programs 300 bitcoins each, which are worth over $366,000.
“[I’m] very excited about bitcoin and what it can do for the world. Bitcoin is as big a transformation to the finance and commerce industry as the internet was for information and communications. If bitcoin were here in 2008, it would be a stability source for our world economy. Everybody should go out there and buy a bitcoin,” Draper said in an interview.`
Continuous support from mainstream and highly regarded investors like Tim Draper is helping the public and the general population to ease into bitcoin. Draper’s support towards early stage startups is proving to be crucial for industry growth and technology development.
Image Via: TBJ
If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.
