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Peter Thiel—Led $2M investment in BitPay, early Bitcoin payment processor

· $2.0M

In May 2013, Founders Fund (Thiel's VC firm) led a $2 million funding round in BitPay, one of the earliest Bitcoin payment processing companies. This was an early institutional bet on cryptocurrency infrastructure when Bitcoin traded around $100. Thiel's libertarian philosophy aligned with Bitcoin's vision of currency free from government control - he had previously stated PayPal's original goal was to 'free currency from government intervention.'

Scoring Impact

TopicDirectionRelevanceContribution
Encryption & Privacy+towardsecondary+0.50
Overall incident score =+0.147

Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (low ×0.5) × confidence (0.59)

Evidence (1 signal)

Confirms Investment May 16, 2013 verified

Led $2M investment in BitPay, early Bitcoin payment processor

In May 2013, Founders Fund (Thiel's VC firm) led a $2 million funding round in BitPay, one of the earliest Bitcoin payment processing companies. This was an early institutional bet on cryptocurrency infrastructure when Bitcoin traded around $100. Thiel's libertarian philosophy aligned with Bitcoin's vision of currency free from government control - he had previously stated PayPal's original goal was to 'free currency from government intervention.'

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