Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund reportedly spent $200m on crypto

San Francisco-based venture capital firm Founders Fund spent $100 million on Bitcoin, and another $100 million on Ethereum last year.

In the summer of 2023, when Bitcoin (BTC) was trading below the $30,000 mark, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund began actively buying BTC alongside Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest crypto by market capitalization, Reuters has learned, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

While the exact quantity of crypto assets acquired by Founders Fund remains undisclosed, the latest investment marks the firm’s re-entry into the crypto space after divesting its stake in crypto in 2022, following Bitcoin’s drop below $20,000.

This also appears to be the fund’s first bet on crypto after it expanded its crypto management team last year, hiring Joey Krug, former co-chief investment officer of crypto venture firm Pantera Capital, and Jennifer Campbell, co-founder of Tagomi, a prime brokerage for crypto assets that was acquired by Coinbase.

Although the $200 million investment mainly focuses on buying crypto, Founders Fund also demonstrated its support for the broader crypto ecosystem by participating in various funding rounds for crypto-related startups.

One such example is the involvement of the venture firm in the $13.5 million series A funding round of Dynamic Labs, a web3 authentication platform. As crypto.news reported, Founders Fund joined the funding round alongside other investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Castle Island Ventures, Breyer Capital, Nikil Viswanathan, and Joe Lau from Alchemy.

Established in 2005 by a group of entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek, Founders Fund is a venture capital firm, focused on investing in early-stage tech companies across various sectors, including technology, healthcare, and finance. Over the years, it has backed several companies, including SpaceX, Airbnb, Palantir Technologies, and Stripe.