Did billionaire Peter Thiel secretly sell Bitcoin?

Peter Thiel is seen as a Bitcoin advocate.

Peter Thiel is seen as a Bitcoin advocate. His venture capital firm, Founders Fund, invested in Bitcoin and related assets since 2014. It was sold in March 2022 — just before an unprecedented crisis year in the crypto sector.

Founders Fund, which was co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, closed a large batch of crypto positions in 2022. The fund sold most of its entire crypto portfolio by the end of March 2022 — just before the crypto market crashed in May. According to the Financial Times, which cites "people close to the fund." In total, the VC firm locked in roughly $1.8 billion in returns.

The fund currently has no sizable crypto positions, according to the paper. The processing of the crypto transactions has not yet been reported to any U.S. regulator, according to insiders. It remains to be seen which criminal statutes the Founders Fund may have violated with the alleged secret sale.

Shortly after selling the crypto holdings, Thiel made remarks at the Bitcoin conference in Miami. "We are at the end of the fiat money regime," he said, adding that Bitcoin was undervalued and "has all the potential to replace gold." Thiel's "biggest mistake over the last decade" was that he "came in too late and didn't invest enough in Bitcoin," he said last year. It is not known why the Founders Fund sold its stake despite the co-founder's positive view.

The San Francisco-based Founders Fund now manages more than $11 billion and has been buying Bitcoin since early 2014.