Fiat currencies will no longerbe in use in five year’s time as they are to be replaced by cryptocurrencies, according to American venture capitalinvestor Tim Draper who has 30,000 bitcoins in his digital wallet.At the WebSummit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, he told
Forbes the fiat system will eventually disappear as people look toward coins like bitcoin or ethereum. He says its because fiat currencies are bound by country borders. “In five years, if you try to use fiat currency they will laugh at
you. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be so relevant … there will be no reason to have the fiat
currencies,” he said. An unabashed promoter of cryptocurrencies, Draper said
he fell in love with bitcoin not long after it was introduced in 2009. He bought 30,000 coins in 2014 (at about $600 each);
they are now valued at over $214 million.
“This is the greatest technology since the internet,’’ said the investor. “This is a sociological transformation, it’s a movement.’’ He also said that bitcoin will
divide the financial services industry, at least initially.
“There will be a few who embrace it and jump out front and say, ‘This is important’ and then there are going to be those who jump back and say, ‘I’m going to cling to the past, and I’m going to hold onto
everything I’ve got.’ And you know who wins then,”
Drapersaid.
“It’s always progress, it’s always technology.’’
Talking at the conference, hesaid investors should thoroughly study who’s
running the ICOs and whether their business plans seem legitimate.“I take huge risks,’’ the businessman said, adding
“I lose my money 60 percent of
the time.’’
Draper has rejected the possibility of the
cryptocurrency market imploding like the dotcom boom in the late ‘90s, saying :
“people are always
going to say there’s a problem, and that usually means there’s a lot more upside.”
The founder of the Silicon Valley VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper has led
investments in Twitter, Skype and Tesla before turning his attention to cryptocurrencies.
The price of bitcoin is down more than 8 percent today, continuing losses that began after the cryptocurrency
slipped below the $7,000 level. Markets have fallen to as low as $6,475.40, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index ( BPI ), the lowest level reported since Nov. 1 (when they traded between $6,357 and $6,750.17). The move below
$7,000 marked a reversal of the market gains seen earlier this week that pushed the price of bitcoin close to
$7,900.