The Node: Tim Draper on Bitcoin’s Gravitational Pull

Central to Draper’s worldview is the notion that bitcoin is simply better technology than any government-issued currency.

Roughly 20% of the global adult population is unbanked, according to the World Bank; Bitcoin enables such people to make online payments, and manage their savings. It’s also incredibly efficient in terms of sending money abroad. A wire transfer will usually take three to five business days (if not more) to arrive, whereas a Bitcoin transaction will generally be sorted within 10 minutes to an hour (or a couple of seconds if you’re using the Lightning Network).

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Still, Bitcoin is now a 16-year-old piece of technology, and there are plenty of sleeker, more efficient blockchain projects out there. Yet, Draper says that anything new in crypto will eventually make its way back to Bitcoin.

“There’s this gravitational pull towards Bitcoin. All of the innovation from other tokens is now getting ported over Bitcoin. It’s like Microsoft with WordPerfect and Lotus 123,” Draper said, referring to how the computer company developed its own word processor (Microsoft Word) and spreadsheet program (Microsoft Excel) by replicating technologies from other firms.

“Smart contracts, DeFi, that’s all moving over to Bitcoin. And bitcoin’s market share has gone from 40% in 2022 to 61% today,” Draper said. “If you’re a retailer, you put up a sign that says, ‘We take bitcoin.’ You’re not going to say ‘We take gozo coin,’ or whatever.”

The technology’s superiority is one of the reasons why the federal government’s prior hostility to crypto was so maddening, Draper said. How can you compete if you don’t make use of all of the innovations at the tip of your fingers?

The U.S. probably lost 10 years of value in the whole ordeal, according to Draper, and while the new Trump administration is firmly pro-innovation, the country still needs to catch up. U.S. users are still geofenced by a lot of crypto projects; nor can they receive airdrops, or tokenize things with the same liberty as most people around the globe.

“I met with the leaders of El Salvador and I got jealous,” Draper said. “Everyone on the street knows how a smart contract works. They build DAOs. They have blockchain everything. It’s crazy. El Salvador, which used to be one of the poorest places in the world, could end up being like Singapore.”

Draper’s thesis, down the line, is that retailers (already slowly adopting bitcoin in some parts of the world) will someday refuse to accept payments in U.S. dollars.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take to get there, maybe 10 years. But there will be a moment there where the dollar and other fiat currencies go extinct,” he said.