Former cryptocurrency billionaire insists: ‘Bitcoin will skyrocket to $ 250,000 over 18 months’

By John Hyatt

In an interview with Forbes last January, investor Tim Draper made an. Ambitious prediction: the value of Bitcoin will jump to $ 250,000 in a year. At the time in question, Bitcoin was worth about $ 41,000.

“It will be done this year,” insisted Draper, who paid $ 18.7 million at a U.S. Federal Judicial Police auction in 2014 for about 30,000 Bitcoin (that means $ 623 per Bitcoin). “By the end of 2022 or in the first half of 2023”.

Draper’s prediction is not verified. Since the beginning of the year, Bitcoin has lost more than 50% of its value, falling from $ 47,000 on New Year’s Eve to $ 20,000. Draper is one of four cryptocurrency moguls who are no longer billionaires due to the Bitcoin crash. However, he is not afraid. We contacted him via e-mail, and he gave the same oracle: “I am more confident than ever,” he stressed. “It will take place at the end of the year or in the first half of next year.”

Easy come, easy go

Since the beginning of March, 11 people have lost a total of $ 61 billion in cryptocurrencies. Only seven of them remain billionaires.

Fred Ehrsam, co-founder and former chairman of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, insists the market collapse is nothing more than a growth problem. “Most people do not realize this: it takes years, often decades, for someone to go through a new technological breakthrough in infrastructure at a ‘living’ mainstream application ecosystem,” Ehrsam wrote on Twitter a few days ago. The value of the 34-year-old “IT magician” is now estimated at $ 900 million, down from $ 2.1 billion compared to March.

Ehrsam stays calm for the following reason: his fortune is about $ 367 million in revenue after taxes and sales of Coinbase shares, $ 316 each on average, with his price trading close to $ 62 on last days. Ehrsam sees the market collapse as an opportunity: he bought $ 77 million worth of Coinbase shares in May on behalf of investment company Paradigm Capital, with the price range ranging from $ 60 to $ 73 per share.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Bitcoin investors, twin brothers and founders of the Gemini cryptocurrency trading platform, saw their fortunes fall from about $ 4 billion in March to $ 3.2 billion today. On June 2, the Winklevoss brothers fired 10% of Gemini staff, citing the “winter of cryptocurrencies”. Meanwhile, their rock band, Mars Junction, is touring California, and in early June, the twins were filmed in a New Jersey bar singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin”, about a week after announcing the layoffs. in Gemini.

As the Winklevoss twins “play” rock star Sam Bankman-Fried, the richest man in the cryptocurrency market, takes on a different role: that of “Savior”. Last week, the 30-year-old FTX founder expanded lending to troubled companies in the market: $ 250 million in BlockFi and about $ 500 million (of which $ 300 million in Bitcoin) to Voyager Digital. “We have a duty to protect the digital asset ecosystem and its customers,” Bankman-Fried wrote on Twitter. His fortune is estimated to have fallen – compared to March – from $ 24 billion to $ 20 billion, with FTX’s capitalization valued at $ 32 billion after the last round of funding in January.

Meanwhile, the former richest man in the cryptocurrency market Changpeng Zhao (or “CZ”), founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest exchange, wrote on Twitter on Thursday: “I am becoming more bullish in bear markets”, adding in a second post “And this is not financial advice.” “CZ” may have been joking, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into Binance’s Initial Currency Offer, according to Bloomberg. The company is also under investigation by the US Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Commission and the Internal Revenue Service (neither Binance nor CZ have been indicted by US authorities).

Zhao is the big loser of the crypto market billionaires, both in percentage terms and in absolute numbers, since March 11th. At that time, CZ – with a fortune of $ 65 billion – was the 19th richest man in the world. Today, its value has dropped to $ 18.7 billion. “I do not really know what my net worth is. I do not care much,” he told Forbes last summer.

Michael Saylor, a loyal Bitcoin fan whose software company MicroStrategy has invested about $ 4 billion in the popular cryptocurrency in recent years, has adopted a different tactic: attack. The 57-year-old businessman has bombarded Twitter with bullish posts, while in recent TV appearances on CNN, Fox Business and Bloomberg, he dismissed the concerns about his company’s balance sheet. In March, MicroStrategy borrowed $ 205 million to buy – as you might expect – more Bitcoin.

Saylor is now another former billionaire, according to Forbes, with a value of just over $ 700 million. Shares of MicroStrategy have fallen 56% since early March, while the Nasdaq has plunged 14% over the same period. However, Saylor has not sold any of his valuable Bitcoin – “not even a satoshi”, he told CNN presenter Julia Chatterley, citing a little-known term for the smallest unit of Bitcoin. (One satoshi is worth 0.00000001 Bitcoin).

“Bitcoin will survive longer than we do,” Saylor insisted. “I’m convinced of that.”