Billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper is doubling down on his bullish bitcoin hand.
Draper, founder of Draper Associates, became famous for his early backing of tech sensations Tesla, Jobs.com and Skype, but if you ask him today, bitcoin surpasses them all.
He was asked during a panel discussion at the Intelligence Squared/Manhattan Institute US debate over the weekend about how his investment in the leading tech plays compares to digital currencies, to which he responded that cryptos would be “bigger than all of those combined.”
“This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined.”
Bullish Call
Draper previously made headlines for his bullish forecast calling for the bitcoin price to attain $250,000 by 2022, a price target that he repeated during the panel discussion. Meanwhile, he also quashed the argument that cryptocurrencies are not a practical method of payment, offering yet another prediction –
“In five years you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto. I believe that there will be a point at which you will no longer really want any of the fiat currency,” said Draper.
Bitcoin Bubble
One of the key questions debated by the panel was the bitcoin bubble, to which Draper compared to the emergence internet.
“The whole premise of ‘is it a bubble?’ is ridiculous. Our last bubble … the internet bubble … Was that a bubble? You guys still use the internet. That was no bubble. That was an amazing transformation of our world,” Draper said before the live audience.
Cryptocurrency Security
For the topic of security, Draper was joined by his co-panelist Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com and CEO of tZero. Together they argued the security case for cryptocurrencies.
“This has been hacked at more than anything in history, but it’s never been defeated. Last I checked, banks get hacked, too,” said Byrne.
Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor at the Financial Times, countered that at least banks have a big enough pool of money to repay the customers in the event of a security breach.
Draper had the last word. “I am so much more secure in my bitcoin than I am in the money that is sitting there in Wells Fargo,” said Draper.