Member-only story
Why Billionaire Entrepreneur & Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel is Bullish on Bitcoin
Billionaire Peter Thiel is the former Founder of PayPal (NAS:PYPL) and Co-founder of Palantir Technologies. He is also a Founder and Managing Partner of the esteemed venture capital firm, Founders Fund. Thiel is also a founder of a number of other VC firms and hedge funds, including Clarium Capital, Valar Ventures, Breakout Labs, Mithril Capital, and Thiel Capital. Peter is also an angel investor and author of Zero to One, a best-seller in the tech and entrepreneurship community (which Derek Thompson of The Atlantic described as possibly the best business book ever written.) He also founded the Thiel Foundation, a philanthropic organize that manages the Thiel Fellowship, which pays 20–25 students a year $100,000 each for starting companies instead of attending college.
Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook (NAS:FB), investing $500,000 in the Company in 2004. This investment was worth over $1 billion when he exited the position (2,000x return). He also invested in the Seed round of Stripe at ~$20 million valuation; the Company is now valued ~$35.3 billion (1,765x mark-up). He invested in the Series A round of Stemcentrx, at ~$7.5 million valuation; the Company was acquired by AbbVie for $10.2 billion (1,360x return). To be honest, the list of Thiel’s…