Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund reportedly sold most of its Bitcoin in March 2022. The fund allegedly netted a hefty $1.8 billion for its cryptocurrency and avoided most of the calamities rocking the industry last year.
Founders Fund Narrowly Avoided the Worst of the “Crypto Winter”
Founders Fund, a venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel—one of the early mainstream investors in Bitcoin—reportedly sold most of its BTC early last year. Allegedly, the company earned around $1.8 billion on the sale in March 2022 and now has nearly no exposure to the cryptocurrency.
While far from its height of over $65,000, Bitcoin’s price was hovering around $40,000 at the time of the sale. The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency only went down from March ending the year at around $16,000. Its first major fall of 2022—which brought it down to around $30,000—came in May when the stablecoin UST lost its USD peg causing LUNA’s value to collapse.
The Founders Fund initially invested in Bitcoin in 2014. Allegedly, it used two-thirds of its overall investment to buy the cryptocurrency. The fund is also a noted investor in Brazil’s Nubank, the neobank N26, and a crypto exchange intended for “whales” called Bullish which was recently forced to scrap a merger agreement with Far Peak SPAC.
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Other Large BTC Investors Still Hold Onto the Token
While Founders Fund sold most of its Bitcoin, other noted investors in the world’s largest cryptocurrency held on throughout the “crypto winter” of 2022. In the summer of last year, BlackRock reached a landmark agreement with Coinbase and started offering BTC to institutional investors.
Another investment giant, Fidelity, maintained its interest in the cryptocurrency since 2014. In 2022, it saw the launch of 401(k) pension plans that offer exposure to Bitcoin, and refuse to give in to pressure from a group of US lawmakers that urged it to discontinue the offering on three separate occasions. It also started offering commissioned BTC trading to investors in 35 states.
MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor is another noted and enthusiastic advocate for Bitcoin. In 2020, the company made history when it adopted BTC as the primary treasury reserve asset and has maintained a stance of adamant Bitcoin maximalism. It continued buying the digital currency throughout the “crypto winter” acquiring more than 2,000 BTC between November and December.
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About the author
Tim Fries is the cofounder of The Tokenist. He has a B. Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim served as a Senior Associate on the investment team at RW Baird’s US Private Equity division, and is also the co-founder of Protective Technologies Capital, an investment firm specializing in sensing, protection and control solutions.
