In another one of his famous bitcoin predictions that gets widespread news coverage, billionaire investor Tim Draper is now predicting that the price of bitcoin, which today traded at around $8,100, will rocket to $250,000 in four years.
Draper, a founding partner in Draper Associates, made the prediction on April 12, 2018, at the Block (Chain) Party at Draper University in San Mateo, California. “I’m thinking $250,000 a bitcoin by 2022,” the investor said, standing in front of his self-named university and wearing a purple tie with gold bitcoins blazoned upon it. “Believe it. They’re going to think you’re crazy, but believe it. It’s happening and it’s going to be awesome!”
He repeated his bold prediction in a tweet the following morning.
Oops! I predicted $250k in 2022. My tweet last night was missing a zero. $250k is the number!
— Tim Draper (@TimDraper) April 13, 2018
To put that number into perspective, the price of bitcoin would have to increase in price 30 times from what it is today to reach that projected number. But Draper, who has also invested in Tezos, another cryptocurrency that has yet to launch, has been right on the money in the past.
Draper’s most notable, and likely most profitable, investment in cryptocurrency was in June 2014, when he won the U.S. Marshals auction of nearly 30,000 bitcoins seized from the now-defunct Silk Road marketplace website. At the time, the price of a single “coin” was valued at around $600. Today, if he has held on to it, that investment would be worth more than $243 million.
Later that same year, when bitcoin was only worth $413, in an interview with Fox Business, Draper claimed bitcoin would reach $10,000 in three years. Again, in 2015, the venture capitalist predicted that bitcoin would top $10,000 by the end of 2017. On November 29, 2017, the price of bitcoin crossed $10,000 for the first time, reaching a peak of over $19,700 a few weeks later.
Draper’s latest prediction, however, comes amidst a global wave of regulatory change and uncertainty, at a time when bitcoin has fallen from its all time high in mid-December 2017 to a low of $6,450 on February 6, 2017. Governments around the world are now clamping down on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrencies to head off money laundering, funding of terrorism and consumer scams.