5 facts you might not know about PayPal, Palantir co-founder

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Peter Thiel is best known to many investors as the co-founder of PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL) and Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE:PLTR).

Here’s a look at five things investors might be less familiar with when it comes to looking into the life of the famous investor and executive.

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Facebook’s first outside investor: Today, social media company Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) is valued at $1.3 trillion. Thiel invested $500,000 in the company in 2004, being the first outside investor. The company’s valuation at the time was $4.9 million.

Thiel owned 10.2% of the company and owned more than 44 million shares when the company went public in 2012. Thiel sold 16.8 million shares at the IPO, earning $640 million, and will later sell most his position.

In total, Thiel turned his $500,000 investment in Facebook into more than $1 billion, CNN reported.

Supporting Trump: Thiel’s political involvement has become a hot topic in recent years. The investor is backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election and also has ties to Trump’s running mate JD Vance. The senator and vice presidential candidate previously worked at Mithril Capital, a Thiel-backed venture capital firm. Thiel’s support for Trump in the 2024 election may be lower this election cycle.

“If you put a gun to my head, I’ll vote for Trump. I’d rather have him … than Biden,” Thiel said earlier this year.

While Thiel donated more than $1 million to Trump in the 2016 election and spoke in support of him at the 2016 Republican National Convention, the investor said he would be less involved in the 2024 election. Thiel also ruled out to donate to Trump’s super (political action committee).

A feud before the 2020 election and a heated phone call with Trump that came to light in recent months show that the relationship between Thiel and Trump has soured over the years. Thiel was a big donor to the Republican Party in 2022, ranking as the fifth-biggest individual donor and the 11th-biggest donor overall for the 2022 election, according to a report.

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Relationship with Musk: As a prominent Silicon Valley investor, Thiel crossed paths with Elon Musk many times. Their most prominent connection over the years has been with PayPal.

The merger between Thiel’s Confinity and Musk’s X became PayPal. Musk was CEO of the payments company before being ousted by a group that replaced him with Thiel.

Known today as members of the PayPal Mafia, Thiel and Musk now have a friendly, if once strained, relationship. Thiel has invested in SpaceX and The Boring Company, and his Founders Fund recently led an investment round in Musk’s company Neuralink.

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Having a hand in creating Ethereum: Benzinga previously wrote about the butterfly effect, or an idea that small events can have nonlinear impacts at a complex level, for the creation of Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin, who is the most famous co-founder of Ethereum, may never have launched the cryptocurrency if it wasn’t for a small change made to the popular video game World of Warcraft. This change led Buterin to become very interested in Bitcoin and he would go on to write for Bitcoin Weekly and co-found Bitcoin Magazine.

Buterin dropped out of university to focus on cryptocurrencies and later secured a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Foundation, which was created by Thiel.

“I went around the world, explored many crypto projects, and finally realized that they were too concerned with specific applications and not general enough – hence Ethereum, which has since busy life,” Buterin previously said.

While the change in World of Warcraft would have had a greater impact, one could theorize that if Buterin hadn’t received the Thiel Foundation award, Ethereum might not exist in the same capacity today. The scholarship award came after Buterin’s idea for Ethereum, but before the official launch of the cryptocurrency.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Lover: Among the elements that helped shape Thiel’s childhood and life was a love of science fiction and fantasy. Thiel played Dungeons & Dragons as a child and also enjoyed reading science fiction by authors such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

Thiel was also obsessed with author JRR Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings. Several Thiel-related companies have names that are linked to Tolkien, including Mithril Capital (a precious metal found in Middle-earth) and Palantir, named after the “seeing stones” from The Lord of the Rings.

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This article Peter Thiel backs Trump, Ethereum’s Buterin backed: 5 facts you might not know about PayPal, Palantir co-founder originally appeared on Benzinga.com