Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund invested $200 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum during the third quarter of 2023, according to sources cited by Reuters.
The amount was evenly split between the two leading cryptocurrencies.
This move marked a return of some institutional players to digital assets following the collapse of FTX and subsequent regulatory pressures, the agency reported.
As one of the early venture crypto investors, Founders Fund began aggressively purchasing Bitcoin in 2014 but liquidated its holdings before the market crash in 2022, realizing a profit of approximately $1.8 billion.
Founders Fund made its initial purchases when digital gold was valued below $30,000. With the current price at $50,000, this operation has yielded an unrealized profit of about 66%.
Reuters noted that Thiel’s firm is known for early investments in companies like Meta and SpaceX. Founders Fund channels capital into “revolutionary technologies that change how we interact with the world,” according to its website.
With AUM of $12 billion, Founders Fund showed interest in crypto investments in April 2023. At that time, Joey Krug, former co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, became a partner in the venture firm.
Previously, the firm invested in Paxos, the NFT platform Royal, and the decentralized autonomous organization BitDAO.
Thiel has long been a proponent of digital assets. Back in 2017, he stated that people underestimate Bitcoin’s potential. In October 2020, the billionaire expressed regrets over insufficient investments in the leading cryptocurrency.
In September 2023, Founders Fund led a $5 million seed round for the blockchain startup Layer N.