The Founders Fund backed by Peter Thiel invested $200M in Bitcoin and Ethereum spliting them equally between the two cryptocurrencies.
The past few months have seen a significant increase in the amount of money institutions have invested in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). According to a recent story from Reuters, the Founders Fund backed by Peter Thiel invested a substantial amount of $200 million in these two cryptocurrencies in the late summer of 2023.
Founders Fund Re-entry Into Bitcoin Market
Furthermore, the fund divided its $200 million investment equally between Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to sources familiar with the situation, the Founders Fund began purchasing Bitcoins during the summer of 2017 when the price of one Bitcoin was less than $30,000.
On the other hand, this was not the first time that the fund had placed a wager on the cryptocurrency that was the most widely traded. An aggressive acquisition of Bitcoin was initiated by Founders Fund, a prominent institutional investor in the cryptocurrency field, as early as 2014.
According to Reuters, the company decided to sell its shares before the financial crisis that occurred in the cryptocurrency market in 2022, which resulted in returns of around $1.8 billion.
A prestigious venture capital firm in Silicon Valley took this previously unreported step indicating a renewed interest in token investments among institutional investors. After the meltdown of the cryptocurrency market in 2022, several funds looking to get out of the sector are now making new entries.
The price of Bitcoin took a nosedive in 2022, reaching approximately $15,000 marking the lowest value it had been since the year 2020. Despite this setback, the prices of both Bitcoin and Ether have slowly returned over the past year culminating in Bitcoin surpassing the $50,000 milestone for the first time in more than two years.
Peter Thiel And Crypto
Despite this, it continues to trade below the all-time high value of $69,000, reached in 2021. Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of PayPal, has publicly expressed his appreciation for Bitcoin.
He has praised Bitcoin as a store of value comparable to gold and as a bulwark against the practices of central banks. Bitcoin’s reliance on blockchain technology, which allows it to function independently of conventional financial institutions, is congruent with Thiel’s views on libertarianism, limited government and technical advancement.
Within Thiel’s broader investment philosophy, this love for cryptocurrencies fits in well. More than $12 billion worth of assets are currently under the management of the Founders Fund, well-known for its early support of firms such as SpaceX and Meta.
In April 2023, the firm took a strategic step that reflected the growing significance of crypto assets by welcoming Joey Krug as a partner. Joey Krug took on the responsibility of supervising digital currency investments. Since the introduction of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) a month ago, the amount of money institutions invest in Bitcoin has increased dramatically.
An anticipated arrival of a spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) by May 2023 may result in increased institutional engagement.