Tim Draper Will Use Bitcoin Stash to Help Developing World Liquidity

bitcoin

Last week the U.S Government held an auction for the 29,656 bitcoin that were seized as part of the takedown of the Silk Road black market. As of Tuesday, it was known that a single buyer had taken the whole lot, and yesterday, that buyer was revealed to be Silicon Valley billionaire entrepreneur Tim Draper.

Draper is an interesting character, known among other things for supporting the state of California being subdivided into six different states and entrepreneurship classes for nine year olds, reports the Financial Times. He is also a supporter of developing world entrepreneurship, and intends to use the fund to help businesses in those nations instead of their fiat currency.

“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies. With the help of Vaurum and 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,” Draper said in a released statement, reports TechCrunch. “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.”

Vaurum is the business that the bitcoin haul is being funneled back to. It’s founder, Avish Bhama, believes bitcoin is a great tool to launch liquidity for merchants in the developing world.

“Vaurum has launched trading platforms in emerging markets, and we will be partnering with Tim to leverage the pool of ~30,000+ bitcoins as a liquidity source. It’s still quite difficult to get access to bitcoin in these developing economies — and that’s exactly where it is needed the most. Our goal is to build reliable infrastructure and increase liquidity, which are two major challenges in the ecosystem.”

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