Silicon Valley Venture Capital Pioneer Tim Draper: A Visionary Betting on Bitcoin and the Future Era

The success of Pop Mart has once again made its early angel investor, Mai Gang, the focus of the market. In fact, Mai Gang's investment vision partly stems from his "enlightener" during his early years studying in the United States - the well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper. In 1998, Mai Gang entered the Chinese venture capital scene and co-founded Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Innovation. Later, during his studies in the United States, he won first place in the UCLA Entrepreneurship Competition, which connected him with Silicon Valley venture capital leader Tim Draper, leading him into the Silicon Valley venture capital industry. In 2005, the two jointly initiated the establishment of the entrepreneurship workshop VenturesLab.

Tim Draper is known as the "father of venture capital," and the projects he has invested in have driven some of the most innovative advancements in today's market, including Skype, Baidu, Hotmail, and Tesla. At the same time, Tim Draper is also an early and staunch supporter of Bitcoin.

Family Legacy and Silicon Valley Genes: The Continuation of Third-Generation Investors

Draper comes from a family with a background in venture capital and politics, being the third generation of this family. His father is the founder of Draper & Johnson Investment Company and has served as the chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. In 1994, Draper's father returned to the investment circle and helped establish the first U.S. VC fund focused on investing in Indian companies.

Draper's grandfather, William Henry Draper Jr., founded a venture capital firm in 1958, laying down the basic rules of modern VC, including management fees and profit-sharing after the exit of invested companies. His grandfather also served as the first U.S. ambassador to NATO.

In a family with both financial and political backgrounds, Draper exhibited a unique perspective from an early age. He attended Phillips Academy Andover, Stanford University, and Harvard Business School, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA.

In 1985, Tim Draper founded Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and later expanded to create multiple entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial education platforms such as Draper Venture Network and Draper University.

Tim Draper's most well-known investment projects include Baidu, Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, AngelList, Twitter, Coinbase, Robinhood, and Twitch.

In the early 2000s, when foreign capital was generally withdrawing from China, Draper chose to stay and ultimately succeeded in investing in Baidu through DFJ. He is one of the earliest Silicon Valley figures to enter the Chinese venture capital industry. In 2005, he co-founded "VenturesLab" with Mai Gang and others, becoming an important participant in China's entrepreneurial ecosystem, and in the crypto field, VenturesLab also became an angel investor for a certain trading platform.

In 2018, the university founded by Tim Draper established a base in Beijing's Zhongguancun through a training camp in China to cultivate blockchain talent, attracting numerous veteran professionals from the crypto industry.

Draper has also invested in some early cryptocurrency projects, such as Ethereum, a trading platform, Ledger, Bancor, Arkham, Ark, Merzo, and Propy.

Connection with Bitcoin: From 40,000 Bitcoins "disappearing" to a firm believer

Tim Draper's interest in Bitcoin began in 2011, when Bitcoin had only been around for two years. He met CoinLab founder Peter Vincennes through investor Joel Yarmon. CoinLab later became an innovation company and miner focused on Bitcoin and was also the largest partner of the exchanges in the United States at that time.

Draper asked Peter to help him purchase $250,000 worth of Bitcoin, at a time when the price of Bitcoin was about $6 per coin. Peter helped him buy some and stored it on a trading platform. Peter also mentioned that he would use a portion of the money to purchase high-speed mining chips to mine more Bitcoins at a lower cost.

However, due to delays in the delivery of mining chips and a theft incident on a certain trading platform, approximately 40,000 Bitcoins that were supposed to be obtained have "disappeared."

This loss not only did not undermine Draper's confidence, but instead sparked his respect for the resilience of the Bitcoin system. Despite facing a major theft incident, Bitcoin only dropped by about 20% and continues to be actively traded.

In 2014, the U.S. Marshals Service auctioned off more than 30,000 Bitcoins that had been seized from a certain platform. Draper saw this as an opportunity to recover losses. In the end, he won all nine blocks of Bitcoin at a price of $632, which was above the market price.

Draper quickly realized that he could do something meaningful with these Bitcoins, such as promoting the adoption of Bitcoin in developing countries. In these countries, people generally lack confidence in their national currencies, often due to government overprinting of money for personal gain, leading to increased corruption and worsening inflation. Worse still, low-income individuals in these countries are often not accepted by banks, being considered an "unbanked" group. These individuals make up approximately 3 billion of the world's "unbanked" population, and Bitcoin could be their solution.

Prediction: Bitcoin will rise to $250,000 by 2025, "Bitcoin will replace the US dollar"

In Tim Draper's view, the advantages of Bitcoin are very clear:

1. It is a globally accepted currency that does not require government intervention;
2. It is a way to preserve value without the need to store precious metals or artworks.
3. It is a frictionless currency that can automatically circulate based on contracts, without the need for explanations or intervention from lawyers or accountants.

He believes that Bitcoin and its underlying technology, blockchain, are the engines driving human progress. The United States wisely chose not to impose regulations on the internet at the outset, allowing a large number of internet entrepreneurs to settle in the country, ultimately leading to the prosperity of the internet economy. Today, if a similar "light-touch" strategy can be adopted for Bitcoin regulation, it will continue to attract innovators to remain in the United States.

In May of this year, Tim Draper continuously stated that the dollar is rapidly becoming worthless and advocated for Bitcoin as an alternative. He believes that as the dollar depreciates, people will rush to spend it. In contrast, people will turn to Bitcoin for security.

Draper expects that retailers will soon prefer Bitcoin, and when this happens, people will start using Bitcoin for consumption. He believes that the popularity of Bitcoin as a medium of payment may be achieved even earlier. He predicts that within 10 years, Bitcoin will replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency. At that time, he even predicts that Bitcoin "will have an infinite value compared to the US dollar." However, in the short term, he expects Bitcoin to reach a price of $250,000 by 2025.

One reason Draper is becoming increasingly pessimistic about the dollar is that the dollar index has performed poorly this year, reflecting a decline in market confidence in the dollar. He pointed out that the weakness of the dollar index is related to global concerns about Trump's trade policies.

Investment Philosophy: Cycle set for 5 to 10 years, passion prioritized over data

As a venture capitalist, Draper summarized six core investment principles:

1. Do not invest too much money in a single company in the early stages.
2. The investment period is set for 5 to 10 years.
3. Do not project your own entrepreneurial experience onto others.
4. Focus on the mission, not money
5. Investment should look at "passion", not "data".
6. Stay flexible and adjust strategies at any time.

Conclusion

While Bitcoin is still being questioned as a "bubble", Tim Draper has already fully committed; while mainstream capital remains cautiously observing Web3, he is already cultivating talent, building infrastructure, and investing in visionaries for the next era. He does not see himself as a speculator, but as a driver of change.

Perhaps in the eyes of Pop Mart investor Mai Gang, Draper is not only an enlightener, but also a person who "ignites a spark in the cold winter of capital."

His actions continue to ferment. Whether Bitcoin will truly replace the US dollar is uncertain, but what is certain is that Tim Draper has bet all his investments on that possible world.