Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund sold most of its crypto a month before the billionaire gushed about Bitcoin at a conference in Miami

While crypto was once one of its core positions, as of March 2022, the company had raised $1.8 billion from the sale of the vast majority of its crypto holdings financial times reports with reference to a person close to the fund. According to FT, two-thirds of his crypto investment was Bitcoin.

The sell-off was timely and shielded the company from the bitcoin price’s plunge later in the year, which would take it to around $15,599 last November, its lowest price in two years.

But in April at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Thiel did not mention his fund’s massive crypto sell-off. He also didn’t waver in his support for Bitcoin. During a speech, he said, “We are at the end of the fiat money regime,” adding that bitcoin is undervalued but has “every potential to replace gold.”

Founders Fund declined to comment to Reuters.

The price of almost all cryptocurrencies plummeted over the past year as the industry saw the bankruptcies of some of its most prominent companies, including crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto exchange FTX. In particular, the collapse of FTX and the criminal charges filed against former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried have harmed several other companies and drawn the attention of regulators.

The San Francisco-based Founders Fund first bought Bitcoin in 2014 when it was trading below $1,000 and increased its holdings over the next eight years. Thiel was also one of the first known investors to put money into Bitcoin.

Partly due to the Bitcoin sell-off and exits from incumbents like Airbnb and data analysis group Palantir, which Thiel co-founded, the Founders Fund has returned around $13 billion to investors between 2020 and late last year, according to FT. The company has more than $11 billion under management.