Tim Draper, founder of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and winner of the US Marshals’ auction of almost 30,000 BTC, spoke to Bloomberg TV on Monday about Bitcoin and some of his firm’s other investments.
The big takeaway is he is obviously very bullish on Bitcoin — if his bid of reportedly more than $19 million isn’t indication enough — and sees blockchain technology completely revolutionizing finance in the next few years.
“I’m very excited about what [Bitcoin] can do where governments are emerging but they have bad currencies,” he told Emily Chang. “I’m excited about what it can do for the US. A Bitcoin transfer is a lot cheaper than one using a credit card. I’m excited for what it could do for the speed of money moving across borders and around the world.”
Chang prodded Draper as to why many business people and investors were still not convinced about Bitcoin, and he said the answer was simple: They hadn’t tried using it yet.
But they should, he said:
“Any institutional investor who is a fiduciary needs to hold some Bitcoin because it is a possibility this becomes the main currency of the world.”
He noted throughout the interview that business people and consumers in emerging economies were beginning to embrace the currency in large numbers, which he said was a huge plus because these people are now using “the most efficient currency system on the planet.”
Plans for the newly acquired coins
Draper has said already he plans to invest the Bitcoin he won into liquidity for Vaurum, an exchange for financial institutions.
“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies,” he said in a statement posted on Vaurum’s Medium blog. “With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies.”