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Billionaire Draper Turns Into MC Crypto to Extol Bitcoin Virtues

Billionaire Draper Turns Into MC Crypto to Extol Bitcoin Virtues

(Bloomberg) -- Tim Draper busted a Bitcoin rhyme.

The billionaire venture capitalist and Bitcoin enthusiast ended an on-stage interview Friday at a technology conference in Amsterdam by singing -- and rapping -- a song about cryptocurrencies.

Donning a purple tie with a Bitcoin pattern, he whipped out his iPhone, stood up, and dropped some rhymes for about three minutes with no background music.

“We want a new world order/we want to pay across the border,” the chorus went. “I just wanna be a Hodler on my Bitcoin hustle,” he intoned, referring to a popular term for being a holder of the digital currency.

Clearly the cryptocurrency market’s recent downturn has done nothing to dent Draper’s enthusiasm for blockchain. He spoke about the technology’s potential to do away with banks, venture capital and governments tied to geographical locations. In an interview on the sidelines of the The Next Web conference, he stuck to his prediction that Bitcoin will reach $250,000 by 2022, arguing that the cryptocurrency will break out of its current lull as spending increases.

The most valuable digital coin fell 0.8 percent to $7,491.79 as of 12:38 p.m. in New York, according to Bloomberg composite pricing. The currency is down more than 20 percent from a recent peak three weeks ago.

Draper has been a consistent cheerleader of cryptocurrencies. In 2014, he bought about 30,000 Bitcoins from a U.S. government auction and has since invested in blockchain startups including Tezos and Bancor.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justina Lee in London at jlee1489@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Blaise Robinson at brobinson58@bloomberg.net, Jeremy Herron, Eric J. Weiner

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.