Home / Archive / Billionaire Bitcoin Bull Tim Draper Has a Wild 5-Year Prediction for Cash and Crypto

Billionaire Bitcoin Bull Tim Draper Has a Wild 5-Year Prediction for Cash and Crypto

Last Updated March 4, 2021 2:53 PM
Tedra DeSue
Last Updated March 4, 2021 2:53 PM

Tim Draper has been one of Bitcoin’s most enthusiastic proponents. He was steadfast in his optimism even when other finance gurus thought he was crazy for giving the new-fangled crypto the time of day.

Forgetting about the naysayers, Draper became about $89 million richer for sticking to his Bitcoin guns. He was steadfast while others, including JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, made jokes about Bitcoin being tulips.

FOMA, or simply recognizing the staying power of cryptos, JP Morgan shocked the financial community this month when it announced it would be the first major institutional bank to release its own cryptocurrency.

Called the JPM Coin, the effort immediately drew criticism.

Even as many, including CCN.com, ripped Dimon for his hypocritical coin, Draper played it cool.

Not Pooh Poohing On JPM Coin

You may recall Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein being grilled to give his thoughts about Bitcoin, and responding that he wasn’t going to “pooh pooh” on it.

Well, Draper took a similar tack in not calling Dimon out for his previous words about cryptos. Draper played nice and compared JP Morgan’s so-called entry into the crypto space, as being akin to “a bellwether akin to Apple welcoming IBM into the PC business.”

Jamie Dimon Bitcoin dow
Noted bitcoin critic and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has overseen the development of JPM Coin, the bank’s own custom ‘cryptocurrency’. Source: Shutterstock

He said on Fox Business Sunday:

Not many bitcoin knockoffs have worked particularly well, but they all add to the interest in Bitcoin.

Chicken And Coffee

Draper has previously talked about all the ways Bitcoin and other cryptos are going to change the way consumers buy things.

He’s pointed to the legendary, fast-food giant KFC, which rolled out its own crypto, saying, “you can buy a bucket of chicken with crypto.”

Coffee junkies will be whipping out their mobiles for baristas to scan when they buy their favorite lattes.

Draper is so optimist that he sees everyone being able to buy their coffee being just two years away. He’s said:

As the Lightning network starts permeating the system, it’ going to make it a lot easier for us to just to use our phone and say here barista use this. I’ve predicted that in five years, we will try and go in to buy coffee with fiat money and the barista will laugh, and ask:

Don’t you have any crypto?

Cash For Criminals

The only people still using cash in the future will be criminals, Draper says

No more cash [will be used] except for criminals. The criminals still want to try to operate with cash because they catch everyone who tries to use Bitcoin. It’s not on the way in when criminals receive Bitcoin, but as soon as they want to spend it those blocks are tagged, so cash will be used for criminals.

And then there are those pesky banks, which so many detest. Draper notes:

I feel my money in a bank is less secure than my Bitcoin is. My bank is constantly under hack attacks, they’re constantly playing whack-a-mole to keep the hackers a way. My Bitcoin is more secure than my dollar.

No one to date, knock on wood, (knocking a fist against his head) has hacked a bitcoin Blockchain.

Say What?!

Draper still gets the question, “when are you going to sell your Bitcoin?”

I say, into what? It’s like taking gold and transferring it into shells. Why would I do that? Why would I go back in time when I know that the future is Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

Draper is even still optimistic about the much put upon ICO. At CES in Las Vegas, he said tokens provide businesses with alternative fund-raising and capital, but VCs just aren’t sitting around scratching their heads.