Tim Draper Meeting With Facebook To Discuss Cryptocurrency Investment

Tim Draper, venture capitalist and founder of Draper Associates, is reportedly meeting with Facebook, Inc. FB to discuss Facebook’s interest in creating its own cryptocurrency. According to BitcoinExchangeGuide, Draper is meeting with Facebook to determine whether or not an investment in Facebook Coin “is a good fit” for Draper Associates.

Facebook Coin

Facebook is reportedly seeking $1 billion in venture capital to help fund the social media giant’s Facebook Coin project. Facebook users would potentially be able to conduct transactions using Facebook Coin over Facebook messaging app, WhatsApp. Facebook Coin would reportedly be a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, making it much less volatile than bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies.

Back in December, Facebook hired former PayPal president David Marcus to lead its cryptocurrency and blockchain technology group. In March, Barclays analyst Ross Sandler said Facebook Coin could ultimately add $19 billion in additional annual Facebook revenue.

“Any attempt to build out revenue streams outside of advertising, especially those that don’t abuse user privacy are likely to be well-received by Facebook’s shareholders,” Sandler said.

Cryptocurrency Disruption

Draper has recently said he expects cryptocurrency to ultimately disrupt fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar and help citizens around the world avoid centralized control. He will be discussing his views on the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology at the upcoming SALT Conference in Las Vegas starting on May 7.

Draper, who was an early investor in companies like Tesla, Inc. TSLA, Hotmail and Skype, reportedly earned $89.1 million by investing in bitcoin starting back in 2014.

Bitcoin prices have nosedived since peaking near $20,000 back in December of 2017. Today, bitcoin trades at $5,094, but Draper is expecting explosive upside in the years ahead. Draper recently reiterated his prediction bitcoin prices would hit $250,000 by 2022.

“My reasoning is that all these engineers have to create all the things they are doing to make it really easy for us to spend it and to use it and to move it and to build it into our contracts and all of that,” Draper said. He said his price target is based on the assumption that bitcoin can gain 5 percent market share of all the world’s currencies.

Draper also lashed out at JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM CEO Jamie Dimon. Dimon has been highly critical of bitcoin in the past, but JPMorgan is reportedly developing its own JPM coin. Draper called Dimon’s actions “so ridiculous” and said a cryptocurrency tied to a bank is never going to perform as well as bitcoin.

Despite a 2019 recovery, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (Btc) GBTC is still down 41.7 percent overall in the past year.

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Image Credit: JD Lasica via Flickr