As bitcoin the asset eclipses all-time price and market cap highs, and Bitcoin the decentralized network continues to prove its value proposition as an alternative to fundamental issues within the legacy system, waves of investors are feeling the FOMO (or, “fear of missing out”).
Metrics like the price of BTC, unique addresses used or confirmed transactions per day can offer glimpses into the growth of Bitcoin FOMO on a network scale. But they don’t highlight the whales, institutional leaders and influential figures who are publicly signaling support for Bitcoin and bringing significant net worth and legacy clout with them.
So, to account for some of the institutional figures who have publicly FOMO’d into Bitcoin, we present the Bitcoin Magazine FOMOmeter. Below, you’ll find our list of the most influential people who have jumped onto the BTC bandwagon, along with the earliest known date of their conversion, some highlights from their resume and their most bullish sentiments on record.
| Name | Public FOMO Date | Estimated Net Worth | Bio | Bullish Sentiments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricardo Salinas Pliego | November 17, 2020: Pliego announced publicly that he holds bitcoin on November 17, 2020. | $12.7 billion | Founder and chairman of telecommunications, media and financial services conglomerate Grupo Salinas. Mexico’s second-wealthiest citizen. | “Bitcoin protects the citizen from government expropriation… YES. I have 10% percent of my liquid portfolio invested.” – Translated from Twitter |
| Stanley Druckenmiller | November 9, 2020: Druckenmiller first indicated his preference for Bitcoin on November 9, 2020. | $4.4 billion | Hedge fund manager and former chairman of Duquesne Capital. Famously shorted the British pound with George Soros in 1992, netting billions of dollars in profit. | “I’m a bit of a dinosaur, but I have warmed up to the fact that bitcoin could be an asset class that has a lot of attraction as a store of value… Frankly, if the gold bet works, the bitcoin bet will probably work better because it’s thinner, more illiquid and has a lot more beta to it.” – CNBC |
| Jim Cramer | September 14, 2020: On an episode of “The Pomp Podcast” released on September 14, 2020, Cramer said that he would invest 1 percent of his net worth into bitcoin. | $100 million | Former hedge fund manager; author; host of CNBC’s “Mad Money”; co-founder of TheStreet.com. | “Gold will do okay, the houses will do okay, those will keep me running in pace. The idea of actually making money, well holy cow, I’ll take a shot at that with 1 percent.” – “The Pomp Podcast” |
| Michael Saylor | August 11, 2020: Saylor’s MicroStrategy invested $250 million in bitcoin on August 11, 2020, then bought $175 million more the next day. | $500 million | Co-founder and CEO of MicroStrategy; author; trustee of online education platform Saylor Academy. | “Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy.” – Twitter |
| Paul Tudor Jones | May 11, 2020: Jones first publicly espoused his belief in Bitcoin on May 11, 2020. | $5.8 billion | Longtime hedge fund manager, founder of Tudor Investment, considered one of the best macroeconomic traders in history. | “I think we are in the first inning of bitcoin and it’s got a long way to go… Bitcoin has this enormous continence of really, really smart and sophisticated people who believe in it.” – CNBC |
| Jack Dorsey | 2017: Dorsey has said that he first became fascinated with Bitcoin in 2017. | $11.4 billion | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter; founder and CEO of Square. | “Imagine being born this year, growing up only known that the potential for a global currency exists… It feels like that just accelerates things even faster. So I think there’s a massive acceleration that’s going to happen within the next 10 years.” – “Tales From The Crypt” |
| Peter Theil | 2017: In 2017, Thiel’s Founders Fund invested $15 million to $20 million into bitcoin. | $5.4 billion | Co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund; the first outside investor in Facebook. | “I do think people are a little bit … underestimating bitcoin especially because … it’s like a reserve form of money, it’s like gold, and it’s just a store of value.” – Future Investment Initiative |
| Cathie Wood | 2015: Wood has said that she started buying bitcoin in 2015 at $250 prices. | $250 million | Founder and CEO of Ark Investment Management, which oversees an $8.6 billion fund. | “[Bitcoin is] so much bigger an idea than even Apple, which is a pretty big idea.” – CNBC |
| Reed Hoffman | 2013: Hoffman has said that he first sought out more Bitcoin knowledge in the summer of 2013. | $2.1 billion | Co-founder of LinkedIn; obtained early stakes in Facebook, Airbnb and Dropbox. | “[Bitcoin’s] attributes all bound together are what convinced me that there’s a certainty that there will be at least one global cryptocurrency and that there’s a good argument that it’s Bitcoin.” – Entrepreneur |
| Bill Miller | 2013: Miller has said that he bought bitcoin in 2013 when it was trading “at around $200.” | $500 million | Chairman of Miller Value Partners, which manages $3 billion in assets. | “The bitcoin story is very easy. It’s supply and demand. Bitcoin’s supply is growing around 2.5 percent a year and the demand is growing faster than that.” – CNBC |
| Chamath Palihapitiya | 2013: Palihapitiya’s Social Capital invested in bitcoin in 2013. | $1 billion | CEO of Social Capital, chairman of Virgin Galactic and owner of the Golden State Warriors NBA franchise. | “What it will do is it will create a quasi gold standard. It’ll create an index, except instead of having to own gold where gold is owned by central banks, it is an instrument that has value that’s determined in between its participants, and it’s owned by everybody.” – “The Pomp Podcast” |
| Tim Draper | 2011: Draper has written that he was introduced to Bitcoin in 2011 and “around that time” asked Coinlab CEO Peter Vincennes to invest $250,000 into bitcoin through Mt. Gox. | $1 billion | Venture capital investor; founder of Draper Fisher Jurveston and Draper Associates; investor in Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Coinbase and Twitch. | “When bitcoin is mature, I expect people to run to bitcoin the way they do to gold when the market gets scary.” – Bitcoin Magazine |
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