Bitcoin has really come back to life after a few sluggish years of dormancy. In the past twelve months, the cryptocurrency has increased 140 percent in value, and the euphoria is apparently back.
On Monday, bitcoin jumped above $50,000, thus reaching its highest level since November 2021. On Tuesday morning, one bitcoin costs $50,107, or NOK 527,000.
Ethereum, on the other hand, is up 85 percent in the past year, to 2,660 dollars or 28,000 kroner.
Someone who should have been part of the upswing is the controversial investor and billionaire Peter Thiel, writes Reuters. His venture fund, Founders Fund, is said to have invested in cryptocurrency for 200 million dollars in the period of late summer and early autumn 2023.
Half was invested in bitcoin, and half in ethereum, sources told the news agency.
Doubled the money
What the purchase price was when the fund started buying last year is not known, but at the end of August one bitcoin cost around 26,000 dollars, while ethereum cost 1,600 dollars. As a result, Thiel’s investments have probably roughly doubled – from NOK 2.1 to around NOK 4 billion.
Thiel’s investment may be a sign that crypto interest is back among the professionals, writes Reuters. Many professional investors and institutions have been skeptical of cryptocurrency after the crash at the start of 2022. The collapse of the crypto exchange FTX led to a broad fall in the crypto market.
Just before that, the bitcoin price was at its highest ever. In November 2021, one bitcoin cost $67,566. By June of the following year, it was down to around 20,000 dollars.
It is also not the first time Founders Fund has bought cryptocurrency – since 2014 the fund has bought up “violently”, before everything was sold just before the crash in 2022. This gave the fund a profit of around 1.8 billion dollars.
Avid Trump supporter
Thiel, who among other things was a co-founder of Paypal and Facebook’s first external investor, has previously spoken very warmly about bitcoin. Among other things, he has compared the cryptocurrency to gold, and believes it functions as a hedge about the central banks’ monetary policy.
Founders Fund now has more than $12 billion in assets under management, according to Reuters.
Thiel has also distinguished himself as an ardent Republican and Donald Trump supporter. He contributed $1.25 million to the campaign that ended with Trump becoming President of the United States in 2016.