Tim Draper, bearer of one of best-known surnames in Silicon Valley’s venture capital business, seems almost larger than life.His patrician manner and habitual suit and tie set him apart from the usual fast-talking, chino-wearing start-up financier.Unusually for such a young industry, he represents a third generation: his grandfather, general William Draper, is credited with being the tech industry’s first venture capitalist. But if the manner can seem out of place, the outsized ambition are entirely in keeping."What you see is what you get: he’s authentically a big personality, it’s not an act,” said Andreas Stavropoulos, a fellow partner at venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

This week, Draper emerged as the sole winner from an auction by the US government of Bitcoins seized when US Marshals service shut down the drugs-and-guns marketplace Silk Road last year.Other prominent VC firms have already jumped on to the Bitcoin bandwagon by backing start-ups in the field. But Draper went a step further, putting his personal money where his mouth was and buying up some $18m of the cryptocurrency. The money is earmarked to create a supply of liquidity for a new marketplace he hopes to create for the developing world.“It’s money that can now be put to good use,” he said. “A lot of people are hoarding their Bitcoins.

I can allow it to proliferate throughout the world.” Of the potential for Bitcoin to become the foundation for a new financial industry, he adds: “This is a long-term, big opportunity for the world.”Stavropoulos credits Draper’s successes during 28 years in venture capital with spotting other nascent technologies, and with keeping his eye set firmly over the horizon rather than getting distracted by the short-term distractions that can knock businesses off course.Draper himself lists the big ideas that have underpinned his most successful investments: peer-to-peer technology, which led to Skype; the viral way that new ideas spread online, with the Hotmail email service; the potential for electric cars to enter the mainstream, leading to Tesla Motors; and China’s new digital markets, leading DFJ to become the first Silicon Valley start-up there and bringing an investment in Baidu.

He is no stranger to using his personal wealth to back his big ideas. He once spent $23m to support a campaign for school vouchers. This year, he has launched a push to let Californians vote on a proposal to break their state into six smaller states.Draper brushes off easy political labels, saying he’s been both a Republican and a Democrat at various times and now is neither. Instead, his instinctive distaste for big government sounds like a venture capitalist’s feelings for entrenched business: he calls them “controlled monopolies” who are under attack as power swings back to voters.Of the main US political parties, he says: “It’s a duopoly, they do not provide a good service.

”True to form, Draper, at 56, is now out to disrupt the industry that has supported three generations of his family. Earlier this year, he gave up his active role in DFJ’s latest fund to switch his attention to a nascent idea in the finance world that he is not yet prepared to explain in detail.“Both venture capital and investment banking have become oligopolies that don’t serve customers as well as they should,” he declares, adding that from Bitcoin to crowdfunding, finance is about to be turned on its head. “I’m looking at all that and saying, venture capital is going to change. I want to get out in front of that.”