A billionaire venture capitalist and early advocate for bitcoin, Timothy Draper champions crypto as capable of brokering a new age of peace in a tumultuous financial world. Furthermore, the Founder and Managing Director of Draper Associates believes the world economy is inexorably connected to blockchain-based technology.
Specifically for the U.S., this could be a portentous moment. Draper believes the nation is voicing the “last roar of the dying lion… The rest of the world is saying, ‘Hey, look, we got global trade. We’re gonna go wherever we feel that there’s enough freedom and trust.’” He believes the surge of borderless currencies like bitcoin will generate employment opportunities as well as lift standards of living for numerous people. The trend could also quickly create a world where centralized governments are inconsequential.
“The fact that [bitcoin] is so frictionless means that the entire world will become wealthier because, as we all know, the more friction in our currency, the less wealth in a society,” Draper said. His concept of frictionless is not dissimilar to neoliberal reforms common in the past half-century. Stemming from the philosophies of economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, neoliberalism posits deregulation and globalization of markets as an economic standard. For the immediate future, Draper is advocating for a soft-touch regulatory attitude to the emergent industry—much like how the internet was handled in its early days.
