Billionaire Tim Draper: Bitcoin to $250,000 by Mid-2023

The American venture capitalist and billionaire Tim Draper is sticking to his earlier $250,000 price prediction for Bitcoin (BTC), although he now believes the price will be hit six months later than before.

Speaking at the Web Summit 2022 event in Lisbon, Portugal, last week, Draper said his $250,000 prediction for the number one cryptocurrency still stands and that this price will be reached by mid-2023.

“By mid-2023, I’m expecting to see Bitcoin hit $250,000,” Draper said.

The new time horizon from the well-known venture investor came after he first predicted in 2018 that Bitcoin would hit that mark in 2022. This had come after Draper correctly predicted that Bitcoin would surpass $10,000 by 2017 back in 2014.

In May this year, Draper again reiterated his bullish stance on Bitcoin in a podcast interview with Scott Melker, saying he believes the coin will reach $250,00 “by the end of this year or early next year.”

“No reason to hold fiat currency”

At this year’s Web Summit, Draper also said that he expects Bitcoin adoption to accelerate once things like “food, clothing, and shelter” can be widely purchased with it. At that point, “there will be no reason to hold on to fiat currency,” he said.

Draper also noted that countries that take a restrictive approach to Bitcoin because they want to “control all the currency,” will suffer. “That’s the way it has been forever,” he said.

“Whenever there is a new technology, and if the government embraces it, let its people experiment with it, those people will often do great things […] we’re going through that right now, it’s going to be interesting,” he said.

Tim Draper has been a well-known investor in early-stage tech companies for several years now. Among his best-known investments are companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Robinhood, and Skype.

Draper has said he first bought Bitcoin in 2011 on now-defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, but lost it all when Mt. Gox collapsed. He still did not lose faith in the cryptocurrency, and in 2014 he won a US Marshals Service auction for nearly 30,000 BTC at a price of $472 per coin.