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Wu hasn’t always been a Bitcoin fan. In 2017, he called it a bubble and asked the question is it really worth anything?
Bitcoin is not backed by any sovereign, and unlike a stock or bond, it doesn’t entitle you to anything other than Bitcoin itself, he wrote, although he added that this illusory quality describes most forms of money. While he questioned the practical value of consumers using Bitcoin to pay for their daily purchases due to its large price swings, he said the cryptocurrency could work well as a store of value that you can sell. He also said that Bitcoin reflected a trend in social trust moving away from human institutions towards code-based systems.
Wu, who coined the term net neutrality and served in the Obama administration, declined to comment for this story.
A White House official said in a statement that Tim was barred from any particular bitcoin or cryptocurrency matters, usually because of his financial interests, and had not worked on any of those issues. The official requested anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
Wu took time off from his post as a law professor at Columbia University to join the Biden administration. At Columbia, he earned $ 617,500 in the 16 months before joining the White House.
Based on the current Bitcoin price of around $ 34,000, Wu holds between 29 and 146 actual Bitcoins. Bitcoin is down more than 40% from its peak, but has performed relatively well in 2021, up around 20% so far this year.
Overall, Wu is worth between nearly $ 4 million and $ 11.5 million, with much of the rest of his money tied up in Vanguard mutual funds. Bitcoin investment constitutes between 25 and 43% of its assets.
Wus’ disclosure reveals that his other investments include condos in Washington, DC and Buenos Aires, Argentina, which he owns with his wife and between $ 15,001 and $ 50,000 in gold bullion. It also shows that he received income from payments for articles, speeches and book royalties.
Those payouts include $ 24,800 last year as an opinion writer for The New York Times, earning $ 1,550 per article, as well as $ 12,285 doing the same for Medium (about $ 650 per article). He has also delivered speeches for $ 15,400, including for the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and the University of Hawaii.
Wu, who has written four books including The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age and The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, also earned between $ 75,205 and $ 181,000 in royalties.
The financial disclosure was provided to POLITICO by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University, which requested the document from the White House.
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