Is Tim Draper ‘Crypto Crazy’ after Huge Bitcoin Prediction?

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper is a fascinating man. Some folks might even call him eccentric. Call him what you like, but with his recent predictions, you certainly can’t call him a Bitcoin (BTC-USD) bear.

In mid-November, Draper made a prediction that turned heads even among the pro-crypto crowd. He then doubled down on his crypto call on December 5. You might not believe what he had to say about the Bitcoin price—but when you hear his reasons, you may actually see his side of the argument.

I’ve heard plenty of bullish and bearish predictions for Bitcoin’s price. I’ve heard critics say that Bitcoin is going to zero, which I feel is an extreme point of view. However, market seers can also go to the other extreme. And I won’t deny that it gets people’s attention, albeit at the cost of credibility.

It’s not every day, though, that we hear a bona fide billionaire make an extreme price prediction. Draper’s call for Bitcoin to hit $250,000 certainly stirred up controversy. But the man’s an established name in the crypto world—he’s a major investor in the Tezos project, which is now worth $232 million in cryptocurrency.

Don’t misunderstand. Draper’s not calling for Bitcoin to reach $250,000 this year or even next year. He expects it to get there in 2022 or 2023 because “Bitcoin payment processors are really going to open the floodgates.”

More specifically, Draper believes that the Lightning Network could help popularize Bitcoin. As the name implies, the Lightning Network enables very fast and cheap transactions. In fact, these transactions can be nearly instant and could cost as little as 1 satoshi. At the current price, that’s around $0.00008788.

Tim Draper’s vision is for ultrafast and cheap Bitcoin payments practically everywhere. “It’s because of Lightning Network and OpenNode and maybe others that are allowing us to spend Bitcoin very freely and quickly,” Draper explained. “It’s not just a store of value but it can be used for micropayments; it can be used for retail, it can be used all over.”

It takes guts to make such an extreme prediction. However, I tend to agree that the Lightning Network has the potential to make transactions faster and cheaper. Whether that will lead to $250,000 Bitcoin by 2023 is a different story.

Still, I have to give credit where it’s due. Tim Draper was an early investor in Twitter (TWTR), Tesla (TSLA), and Skype, and these are all very successful today. In a way, I have to admire his bravery even if his prediction turns out to be wrong.

If anybody thinks that Draper will back down from his prediction, don’t count on it. On December 5, Tim Draper declared that his $250,000 Bitcoin prediction is “right on track.” He said this even though Bitcoin’s price struggled in November.

Believe it or not, Draper considers $250,000 to be a conservative estimate for Bitcoin. “I actually think $250,000 may be a little bit light. It may actually be more like the beginning of 2023, but all systems seem to be ‘go’ for a real Bitcoin – a lot of excitement around Bitcoin,” Draper said recently.

Draper has even done the math for us. He said, “My prediction was really based on creating enough of an infrastructure to bring Bitcoin to a 5% market share around the world as a currency.” Whether it reaches 5% remains to be seen. And, whether that causes the Bitcoin price to get to $250,000 is also debatable.

We don’t have to agree with Tim Draper’s math to appreciate his outlook. The Lightning Network holds a great deal of promise for financial technology. And if you like anti-inflationary currency, Bitcoin holds great promise, too.