Peter Thiel Fund Moves to Ease Trades for Big Crypto Investors

Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm known for its early investment in Facebook, has reportedly put money into a cryptocurrency startup that aims to optimize the bulk trading of cryptocurrencies.

According to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Founders Fund – co-founded by the high-profile investor Peter Thiel and based in San Francisco – is now backing a startup named Tagomi Systems Inc., which boasts a mission to serve as a broker-dealer to optimize bulk bitcoin trading orders for high-value clients.

While it remains unclear how much Founders Fund has invested in Tagomi, the report said the startup has netted $15.5 million in funding so far. In addition, a filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, dated March 15, indicates that Napoleon Ta, a partner at Founders Fund, will serve as a Tagomi director.

According to the WSJ report, the problem that the startup aims to solve stems from a fragmented trading environment across global cryptocurrency exchanges, where, for instance, the price of bitcoin can vary between platforms.

As such, the startup – co-founded by Greg Tusar, the former chief of electronic equities trading at Goldman Sachs – is building a platform that finds the best market to execute large numbers of cryptocurrency trading orders at a specific time.

The news comes soon after it was revealed that Founders Fund itself has already moved to invest in bitcoin, as reported by CoinDesk in January.

It also follows Thiel's bullish view on bitcoin reported in October last year when the billionaire investor argued that critics of bitcoin were "underestimating" the cryptocurrency. And, in March, he said there will ultimately be only one digital equivalent to gold, and bitcoin, as the "biggest" cryptocurrency, will triumph.

Peter Thiel image via CoinDesk