Recently, I’ve been thinking about a question: why can some investors see through the market haze, while most people are still watching from the sidelines? The angel investor of Pop Mart, Mai Gang, may be able to give us the answer—behind his investment instincts is a Silicon Valley legend named Tim Draper.

The name Tim Draper is already very well known throughout the crypto community. But you might not know that his investment “genes” are written into his bones. His grandfather, William Henry Draper Jr., founded a venture capital firm in 1958, directly laying down the basic rules of modern VC—management fees and project profit splits. These things that seem taken for granted today were created by him. His father was also an old hand in the investment world, and later founded Draper International, focusing on investing in Indian companies. By the time of Tim Draper’s generation, this man founded the DFJ Fund in 1985 and invested in a host of companies that changed the world, including Baidu, Tesla, SpaceX, Hotmail, and Skype.

More importantly, Tim Draper was one of the earliest Silicon Valley figures to enter China’s venture capital market. In the early 2000s, when other capital was withdrawing from China, he stayed and held his ground. In the end, he successfully invested in Baidu. In 2005, together with Mai Gang and others, he co-founded “Chuangye Gongchang” (“Entrepreneurship Incubation Workshop”), becoming an important participant in China’s startup ecosystem.

But what impressed me most is his story with Bitcoin. In 2011, just two years after Bitcoin was born, Tim Draper got to know CoinLab’s founder through an introduction from an investor. At that time, Bitcoin was only $6 per coin, and he decided to put in $250,000 to buy. The plan was to use that money to purchase mining chips and mine about 40,000 bitcoins. What happened then? The chip manufacturer Butterfly Labs delayed shipping, mined for itself for a few months first, and by the time the chips were shipped, mining difficulty had already skyrocketed. Even worse, those bitcoins were ultimately kept on Mt.Gox (Mt. Gox), and disappeared after the exchange was hacked.

This loss would be enough to shake anyone’s confidence. But Tim Draper’s reaction was interesting—he didn’t complain or blame anyone. Instead, he paid tribute to Bitcoin’s resilience. Despite the huge theft, Bitcoin fell only about 20%, and trading remained active. He realized just how strong the demand for this new kind of digital currency was.

In 2014, the U.S. marshals auctioned off the bitcoins seized from the Silk Road. Tim Draper saw an opportunity to make up for his losses. At the time, the market price was $618 per bitcoin. He decided to bid $632 and ultimately won all 9 blocks, totaling more than 30,000 bitcoins. He quickly realized he could do meaningful things with these bitcoins—promoting Bitcoin’s adoption in developing countries. Those low-income people there could not be accepted by banks at all, and the roughly 3 billion “unbanked” people worldwide urgently needed a solution.

Since then, Tim Draper has become one of Bitcoin’s most steadfast believers. He believes Bitcoin has three major advantages: it’s globally usable, requires no government intervention, preserves value, and enables frictionless transactions. He even believes Bitcoin and blockchain are engines that drive human progress.

This May, Tim Draper made back-to-back statements on social platforms: the U.S. dollar is heading toward extinction; as it depreciates, people will scramble to spend it, and ultimately turn to Bitcoin. He predicts that within the next 10 years, Bitcoin will replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. In the short term, he forecasts that Bitcoin will reach $250,000 in 2025—although this prediction sounds a bit aggressive now, based on his logic, he is betting on Bitcoin’s widespread adoption as a medium of exchange.

As an investor, Tim Draper has also summarized his investment philosophy. The most critical points are: in the early stage, don’t put too much money into any single project—leave yourself plenty of ammunition; set an investment cycle of 5 to 10 years; don’t impose your own entrepreneurial experience on others; and most importantly, look at passion, not data. He once told a very interesting story: at first, when a startup founder showed him a financial model, he was cold and indifferent. Later, the founder changed strategy and honestly discussed the industry’s current state and the company’s transformative vision, and Tim Draper was instantly drawn in. He said, “I’m looking for passion.”

This is why Mai Gang can see through Pop Mart’s bubble. After meeting Wang Ning just five days ago, he decided to invest. This is not gambling—it’s based on the investment intuition passed down from Tim Draper: reading people, reading passion, and reading mission.

Interestingly, Tim Draper’s layout in the crypto space goes far beyond Bitcoin. He has also invested in early projects like Ethereum, Coinbase, and Ledger. Even in 2018, he set up a blockchain training base in Zhongguancun, Beijing through Draper University. He never sees himself as a speculator; he sees himself as a driver of change.

While mainstream capital is still cautiously observing Web3, Tim Draper has already gone all in. When Bitcoin was still being questioned as a “bubble,” he was already voting with his actions. The power of this belief might be exactly what those investors who truly change the world possess.