Billionaire investor Tim Draper argued that businesses who have yet to purchase Bitcoin for their corporate treasuries are “being irresponsible.”
Speaking at the Financial Times Digital Assets Summit, the prominent Bitcoin bull argued that “everybody ought to have some Bitcoin,” noting that “governments are recognizing that Bitcoin should be in their treasury.”
Draper, who remains “optimistic” that Bitcoin will hit $250,000 by the end of 2025, added that he hopes to have a fund “in the next five years” that runs entirely on the cryptocurrency: “I raise it completely in Bitcoin, I invest it in entrepreneurs in Bitcoin, all of them pay their employees and suppliers all in Bitcoin.”
The fund, he suggested, would operate “on a smart contract,” enabling taxation and record-keeping to be carried out automatically. “The blockchain keeps perfect records, and my friction items—my accounting, my legal, my auditing, my bookkeeping—all go to zero, or very close to zero.”
Bitcoin’s “gravitational pull”
A growing number of companies are adding Bitcoin to their corporate treasuries, notably U.S. firm Strategy, medical device manufacturer Semler Scientific and Japanese company Metaplanet. Just two days ago, Bernstein analysts predicted that corporate treasuries will suck in $330 billion in Bitcoin by 2029, as smaller firms copy Strategy’s playbook.
Draper also suggested that there’s a “gravitational pull toward Bitcoin” and away from altcoins as a platform for development.
“A lot of the creativity used to be around Ethereum, Solana,” he said, adding that, “now most of the engineers and entrepreneurs are driving it toward Bitcoin. So Bitcoin now has smart contracts, Bitcoin now has DeFi, it has Ordinals, it has Runes.”
However, Bitcoin’s increasing role as a software platform beyond financial applications has proved contentious among its developer community. Bitcoin devs are currently at odds over a technical change that would enable it to store larger amounts of non-financial data directly on the blockchain, with one longtime Bitcoin Core contributor arguing that the change would turn Bitcoin into a “worthless altcoin.”
The road to $250,000
Bitcoin’s price is currently hovering around $97,000, down 11% from its all-time high set in January ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Draper argued that Bitcoin had yet to reach his predicted $250,000 figure because “we were over-regulated for four years,” under the Biden administration, and likened the cryptocurrency to “when the Brits discovered gunpowder.”
“It’s a complete change,” he said. “You wouldn’t do war the same way after gunpowder; you don’t do commerce the same way after Bitcoin.” Arguing that the cryptocurrency is “just better technology,” he predicted that “eventually I believe that the path will be fiat to stablecoin to Bitcoin,” and that ultimately, “we’re eventually going to see a time where we’re really not measuring against the dollar, because there won’t be a dollar.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
Image credit
Main image by Stephen McCarthy/Web Summit Rio via Sportsfile licensed under CC BY 2.0.
