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0 pointsmikeyouse4y ago0 comments

More recently, ProPublica showed that Peter Thiel (and others) did the same thing. Thiel amassed $5 Billion into an IRA that's nominally capped at $6k/year in contributions.

https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec...

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cma4y ago· 2 in thread

Did he use the mega-backdoor contribution thing, or did he grow it from a tiny amount?

caseysoftware4y ago

He invested the entire amount ($1700 at the time, iirc) into his new startup before they'd raised any money: Paypal.

Then used the proceeds from that to invest in variety of things, including an early (angel?) investment in Facebook.

It's all detailed in the Propublica story where they described his Paypal investment as a "sweetheart deal".

dehrmann4y ago

There's a huge survivorship bias with this. He put his IRA on 00 and it hit, but most of the time, it won't, and most people wouldn't take that bet. This is a lot of effort to solve a non-problem that got press coverage.

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