Peter Thiel Supports Trump, Backed Ethereum's Buterin: 5 Facts You Might Not Know About PayPal, Palantir Co-Founder

Peter Thiel is best known to many investors as the co-founder of PayPal Holdings PYPLand Palantir Technologies Inc PLTR.

Here’s a look at five things investors may be less familiar with when it comes to looking at the life of the famous investor and executive.

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First Outside Facebook Investor: Today, social media company Meta Platforms Inc META is valued at $1.3 trillion. Thiel invested $500,000 in the company back in 2004 as the first outside investor. The company’s valuation back then was $4.9 million.

Thiel owned 10.2% of the company and held more than 44 million shares when the company held its IPO in 2012. Thiel sold 16.8 million shares in the IPO, making $640 million and would later sell the majority of his position.

All told, Thiel turned his $500,000 investment in Facebook into more than $1 billion, as reported by CNN.

Backing Trump: Thiel’s political involvement in recent years has become a hot topic. The investor is backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election and also has ties to Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance. The senator and vice-presidential candidate previously worked at Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm backed by Thiel. The support for Trump in the 2024 election by Thiel may be less this election cycle.

“If you hold a gun to my head, I will vote for Trump. I’d rather have him…than Biden,” Thiel said earlier this year.

While Thiel donated over $1 million to Trump for the 2016 election and spoke in support of him at the 2016 Republican National Convention, the investor said he would be less involved for the 2024 election. Thiel also ruled out donating to Trump’s super PAC (political action committee).

A falling out ahead of the 2020 election and a heated phone call with Trump that came to light in recent months show that the relationship between Thiel and Trump has soured over the years. Thiel was a large donor to the Republican party in 2022, listed as the fifth largest individual donor and 11th largest donor overall for the 2022 election according to a report.

Relationship with Musk: As a prominent Silicon Valley investor, Thiel’s path has crossed with Elon Musk many times. Their most prominent connection over the years was at PayPal.

The merger of Thiel’s Confinity and Musk’s X became PayPal. Musk served as CEO of the payments company before he was ousted by a group that replaced him with Thiel.

Known as a member of the PayPal Mafia today, Thiel and Musk have a friendly relationship now even though it was once tense. Thiel has invested in SpaceX and The Boring Company and his Founders Fund recently led an investment round in Musk’s Neuralink company.

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Having a Hand In Ethereum Creation: Benzinga previously wrote on the butterfly effect, or an idea that small events can have non-linear impacts on a complex level, for the creation of Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin, who is the most famous co-founder of Ethereum, may never have launched the cryptocurrency if it wasn’t for a small change made in the popular video game World of Warcraft. This change led to Buterin becoming heavily interested in Bitcoin and would go on to write for Bitcoin Weekly and co-found Bitcoin Magazine.

Buterin dropped out of university to focus on cryptocurrency and later obtained a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Foundation, which was created by Thiel.

“I went around the world, explored many crypto projects and finally realized that they were all too concerned about specific applications and not being sufficiently general — hence the birth of Ethereum, which has been taking up my life ever since,” Buterin previously said.

While the change in World of Warcraft may have had a bigger impact, it could be theorized that if Buterin didn’t get the Thiel Foundation award, Ethereum might not exist in the same capacity today. The fellowship award came after Buterin’s idea for Ethereum but before the official launch of the cryptocurrency.

Lover of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Among the items that helped shape Thiel’s childhood and life were a love of science fiction and fantasy. Thiel played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid and also loved to read science fiction by authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

Thiel was also obsessed with author J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote “The Lord of the Rings.” Multiple Thiel-related companies have names that are connected to Tolkien including Mithril Capital (a precious metal found in Middle-earth) and Palantir, named after “seeing stones” in “The Lord of the Rings.”

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