Bitcoin Bull Tim Draper Sticks To $250,000 Price Prediction For BTC In 2023

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper is convinced that Bitcoin will tap $250,000 in the first half of 2023, despite the ongoing crypto winter. Earlier this week, the businessman noted that not even the ongoing FTX crisis would stop the top cryptocurrency from achieving that target.

“No change in the price prediction. Still $250,000 by early next year,” Draper told Cointelegraph in Nov. 15 interview.

Sharing his thoughts on the effects of FTX’s collapse to Bitcoin, Draper added that the cryptocurrency would always emerge out of the chaos since it was decentralized and FTX was not.

“FTX was centralized, reliant on a single founder,” added Draper, referring to Sam Bankman-Fried “SBF”, the founder and former CEO of FTX. “When a currency is centralized, a central bank, for instance, has a single point of failure, and can also be manipulated,” he added. 

In the wake of the FTX debacle, SBF has found himself hard-pressed to explain how the leading crypto exchange found itself in its current situation. In a series of tweets this week, the young CEO has owned up to managerial mistakes that led to FTX’s bankruptcy.

“A few weeks ago, FTX was handling ~$10b/day of volume and billions of transfers. But there was too much leverage–more than I realized. A run on the bank and market crash exhausted liquidity,” Fried tweeted Wednesday. 

According to Draper, although the dramatic fall of FTX had triggered some negative outcomes on crypto prices, on the positive side, it would most likely trigger more decentralization in crypto. “I think this fiasco is going to bring on a lot more Bitcoin maximalists. Note that your money is not secure in a centralized system, whether crypto or fiat.”

The billionaire also emphasized the importance of self-custody, noting that he uses Ledger and Coinbase for his coins’ safekeeping. “Neither of them is using my tokens to borrow or invest,” he said.

Meanwhile, while crypto-twitter appears to give an unenthusiastic reaction to Draper’s predictions, the pundit has successfully predicted prices for Bitcoin in the past. In 2014, when the BTC price was less than $320 a Bitcoin, he correctly predicted that it would pass $10,000 in 2017.

On several occasions, Draper projected that BTC would hit $250,000 before the end of 2022. However, the crypto market has receded sharply on the back of unfavourable macroeconomics forcing the businessman to push his prediction to next year.