Tim Draper launches new crypto accelerator

Tim Draper is one of the few existing crypto billionaires in the world, and he is also one of the leading investors in the industry. 

He recently announced the launch of a crypto accelerator called DGB. 

Tim Draper’s new crypto accelerator

DGB stands for Draper Goren Blockchain, and is a partnership between Tim Draper, Alon Goren, and David Bleznak. 

The accelerator aims to incubate Web3 projects and crypto startups despite the bear market. 

Draper Goren Blockchain is a new Venture Studio backed precisely by Tim Draper, and focused on Web3, cryptocurrency, and blockchain. 

The fact is that the group behind this accelerator has already been working together successfully for years, and despite the bearish market has decided to double down on crypto. 

The project’s three founders, Draper, Goren, and Bleznak, say they are optimistic about its future. 

DGB aims to amplify the reach of the crypto projects it will incubate, and particularly those that are already advancing the sector in anticipation of an influx of millions of new users and institutions in the coming months and years. 

Tim Draper and successful investments

In their statement announcing the initiative, they write that Tim Draper is a founder and special limited partner of DGB, as well as a general partner of Draper Associates. 

He is best known for being an early investor in Coinbase, Robinhood, Tesla, Skype and other successful companies. 

He comes from traditional finance, as he started his own venture capital firm decades before the emergence of cryptocurrencies. 

His first success was investing in Hotmail back in 1996, and in 2001 he was the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist to invest in China’s Baidu. 

He entered the crypto sector more than a decade later, in 2014, when he bought at a court auction 30,000 Bitcoin paying only a little more than $600 each. 

It is unclear how many of those BTC Draper still owns, but this is certainly one of the investments that has paid off the most for him, as 30,000 BTC are now worth $800 million.

About DGB he stated: 

“It’s a cliche that bear markets are a time for builders to build, but that means there are incredible projects currently being developed that are in need of capital and support. With DGB, we are reinforcing our dedication to amplify crypto projects that are advancing the industry in anticipation of an influx of millions of new users and institutions in the coming months and years.”

Other founders

Alon Goren is a founding partner of DGB and an early investor. 

He is also a board member of major projects such as LunarCrush and Ownera. 

He stated: 

“We’ve been backing bitcoin and crypto founders for many years now and intend to be here for the long-haul. I’m very excited to launch this new venture alongside Tim Draper and David Bleznak with the goal of championing innovation and supporting visionary entrepreneurs building in the Web3 space.”

David Bleznak is a founding partner of DGB. 

He was most recently at Coinbase and led aggregation and trading platform DeFi Totle to a successful acquisition

He said: 

“Despite how much evolution has already transpired in Web3, we’re still at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring new iterations of applications and use cases. We’re particularly excited about innovations in DeFi, blockchain Layer-2 infrastructure, and consumer applications in gaming, social, and more, and we look forward to launching our initial fund to support projects with novel visions for the industry.”

Tim Draper, investments and crypto 

These cases are not about investing in digital assets in the hope that their price will rise in the future. 

Instead, it is about funding productive companies or organizations that develop new technical solutions for the crypto markets of the future. 

Since the crypto market is still in its early stages, the potential for expansion in theory is many, so those who can come up with the best solutions to the market could achieve enormous success. 

Of course, Draper, Goren, and Bleznak also and above all aim to make their investments pay off in this regard, but at the same time in this way they are funding the innovation and evolution of this sector. 

Draper in particular over the decades has proven to be quite good at funding innovation, such as when he helped Skype emerge some 20 years ago, or as when he invested in Tesla in 2006 a few years after its inception and only two years after Elon Musk‘s investment. 

This is also very different from investing in established companies, because it involves taking huge risks due to uncertainty about the future, in the hope that you have funded the right innovations, and more importantly the right innovators.