07.03.14
Six Californias Billionaire snarfs up BitCoins
BitCoin, the digital currency only for wealthy libertarian tech nerds, inheritance billionaires, speculators, hoarders and black markets, burnished the reputation today when venture capitalist Tim Draper was reported as having bought 19 million dollars worth of them, about 30,000, at the US government’s auction of the digital money recovered from the closed website, Silk Road.
From the wire, Draper’s statement:
“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies … With [this] newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies. Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency. We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.”
Because, after all, escaping from the debasement of currencies like the dollar, is what BitCoin is about. This morning the Winkdex reported the value of a BitCoin at $641.
Readers may remember Draper is the billionaire behind the 2016 ballot initiative to split California into six states, the one he lives in to be named “Silicon Valley.”
“We need to reboot and the Six Californias initiative would bring government much closer to the people,??? Draper told a news agency a couple weeks ago.
Draper [wants] “people to have a choice, to be local to their state government and to be able to get a refresh so that schools, streets and waterways could improve, poverty would decrease and businesses would want to keep jobs here.”
Which translates as freeing the tech titans of “Silicon Valley” from the big drag of everyone else.
The video is Draper singing “The Riskmaster,” a song he delivers frequently at conferences to handfuls of like-minded libertarian tech nerds in attendance to beg him for money for their start-ups. In this instance it is at Hero City, part of his Draper University of Heroes. (Yes, it’s redundant.)
And no, I’m not making it up.
“It’s just after breakfast, and the superheroes are gathering in a cavernous white-walled room amid a sea of brightly colored beanbag chairs,” reads a NY magazine profile from last year. “Once assembled, they place their hands over their hearts, face the portraits of Thomas Edison and Bill Gates hung high on the wall, and begin reciting their daily oath.”
“I will promote freedom at all costs!??? says Tim Draper, a venture capitalist with a microphone slung over his ear and a “Save the Children??? tie brightening up his suit.
“I will promote freedom at all costs!??? the heroes echo back.
In lieu of diplomas, Draper U. students receive masks and capes printed with their superhero nicknames and are instructed to jump on each of a series of three small trampolines placed in a line in front of them. While bouncing from trampoline to trampoline, they’re told to shout, “Up, up, and away!???
The school’s purpose is to train students, usually the children of wealthy people, on how to maintain their optimism and act like heroes of capitalism in the building of start-ups.
Pure gold.