Tim Draper Denies Moving Bitcoin, Sticks With $250K Forecast

Billionaire investor Tim Draper has denied moving any of his Bitcoin holdings, pushing back against claims from blockchain analysts who linked him to a wallet that sent 1,000 BTC, worth roughly $62 million, to Coinbase Prime. “Haven’t touched my BTC,” Draper told Cointelegraph on Friday, while reiterating his long-standing prediction that Bitcoin will reach $250,000 within a year.

The denial follows a Friday report from blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain, which cited data from Arkham showing that a wallet “possibly linked” to Draper had moved the 1,000 BTC to Coinbase Prime. Arkham’s AI-driven entity prediction tool had labeled the wallet “Tim Draper?”, a designation the platform uses for lower-confidence attributions meant to hint at possible ownership rather than confirm it.

Wallet history shows repeated Coinbase Prime activity

According to the transaction history reviewed by Cointelegraph, the wallet in question has interacted with Coinbase Prime multiple times over the past year. That includes a transfer of 1,000 Bitcoin from Coinbase Prime on July 9, 2025, when BTC was trading around $115,880 per coin.

Cointelegraph reached out to Arkham for comment on the wallet attribution but had not received a response at the time of publication. The episode underscores both the growing use of on-chain analytics to track large crypto movements and the persistent difficulty of definitively confirming who actually controls a given wallet.

From Silk Road auction to crypto’s loudest bull

Draper is one of the most recognizable early Bitcoin investors, having won a US Marshals Service auction in 2014 for nearly 30,000 Bitcoin seized by US authorities from Silk Road-related holdings. Forbes has reported that Draper paid about $18.7 million for the stash, or roughly $632 per coin, a position now worth an estimated $1.9 billion.

That early bet cemented Draper’s reputation as one of Bitcoin’s most vocal long-term believers, a status he has maintained through multiple market cycles.

A $250,000 target with a history of missed deadlines

Draper’s renewed $250,000 forecast extends a prediction he has held since at least 2018, when he initially expected Bitcoin to hit that level by late 2022 or early 2023. Bitcoin’s all-time high remains $126,080, reached on October 6, 2025, according to CoinGecko, while the coin was trading around $62,530 at the time of publication.

Draper is not alone in projecting sharply higher prices. Blockstream CEO Adam Back has said Bitcoin could eventually reach between $500,000 and $1 million, arguing that milestone “may be closer than people think.” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has floated a figure as high as $700,000 if institutional adoption accelerates, while longtime Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff continues to argue the asset has no intrinsic value and could eventually fall to zero.

By contrast, traders on Polymarket’s “What price will Bitcoin hit in 2026?” market are pricing the most likely outcome between $65,000 and $70,000, with bets clustering near $68,000, a far more conservative range than Draper’s long-held target.

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