Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel’s fund, Valar Ventures, owned roughly 19% of BlockFi’s shares, a digital asset lender. The cryptocurrency lender’s abrupt bankruptcy filing has served as a big blow to Thiel’s fund, one of the largest shareholders of BlockFi, as per the bankruptcy filing. The other major shareholders of BlockFi include Bain Capital, Tiger Global, and crypto exchange platform Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) among others.
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Also earlier this year, Valar Ventures took a hit from the bankruptcy of another crypto lender it backed, Vauld Group. Valar was spun off from Thiel’s original Thiel Capital fund. Billionaire Thiel has been a long-standing advocate of the crypto world, and his funds have taken huge exposures to crypto assets.
His other fund, the Founders Fund, also has hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin (BTC-USD) holdings across its funds. In the past, Thiel has propagated Bitcoin as a “revolutionary youth movement” and has openly attacked the contrasting views of other billionaires on cryptocurrencies. Only time will tell if Thiel’s stance on crypto changes after his funds amass huge losses on them.
Thiel is known for co-founding and investing in profitable start-ups, including fintech company PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL), and software company Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR). He also financed Elon Musk founded SpaceX.
The fallout from FTX’s bankruptcy continues to have contagion effects on other crypto firms, demonstrating their deep interdependence. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has been holding up well above the $16,000 mark in the last few trading days.
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