Paul Tudor Jones, Founder of Tudor Investment Corporation
Biography
Paul Tudor Jones II was born on September 28, 1954, in Memphis, Tennessee. His father was a lawyer and his mother an artist. Jones attended Presbyterian Day School and Memphis University School before enrolling at the University of Virginia, where he earned a degree in economics in 1976 while also winning the university welterweight boxing championship.
After graduating, Jones began his career as a commodities trader at E.F. Hutton & Co. under the mentorship of legendary cotton trader Eli Tullis. In 1980, at just 26 years old, he founded Tudor Investment Corporation with $30,000 in seed capital from Commodities Corporation. Jones became a Wall Street legend virtually overnight when he predicted and profited enormously from Black Monday in October 1987 — his fund gained 62% that month alone and finished the year up 200% while markets collapsed around him. The trade, captured in the cult documentary “Trader,” cemented his reputation as one of the greatest macro traders of all time.
Today, Tudor Investment Corporation manages approximately $13 billion in assets across investors from 35 countries. Jones’s net worth is estimated at $8.1 billion, placing him among the 200 wealthiest people in America. Beyond finance, he founded the Robin Hood Foundation in 1988, a pioneering venture philanthropy organization that has distributed billions of dollars to fight poverty in New York City, and co-founded JUST Capital, a nonprofit that ranks corporations on how they treat workers, communities, and the environment. He and his wife joined the Giving Pledge in 2019.
Orange Pill Story
Paul Tudor Jones’s path to Bitcoin began not with technological curiosity but with macroeconomic alarm. In May 2020, as governments around the world printed trillions of dollars in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones published an investor letter titled “The Great Monetary Inflation.” In it, he described an “unprecedented expansion of every form of money unlike anything the developed world has ever seen” and warned that inflation was inevitable. He evaluated multiple stores of value — gold, Treasury inflation-protected securities, commodities, and Bitcoin — across criteria including purchasing power, trustworthiness, liquidity, and portability. His conclusion was stark: Bitcoin was the “best profit-maximizing strategy” and “the fastest horse in the race.”
Jones initially allocated 1-2% of his Tudor BVI fund to Bitcoin futures at a time when the asset was trading around $9,000. By October 2020, he told CNBC he liked Bitcoin “even more now” and that the rally was “still in the first inning.” By June 2021, he had publicly increased his target allocation to 5%, telling CNBC’s Squawk Box that Bitcoin appealed to him because it was “reliable, consistent, honest, and 100% certain.” He described it simply: “Bitcoin is math.” As the years passed, Jones never wavered. Through bear markets and regulatory crackdowns, he maintained his position, telling Blockworks in 2023 that he had “never sat on a horse that long.” By 2024, he had grown his IBIT (BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF) holdings to over $445 million — making Bitcoin one of the largest positions in his entire portfolio.
Bitcoin Philosophy & Quotes
“The best profit-maximizing strategy is to own the fastest horse. If I am forced to forecast, my bet is it will be Bitcoin.” — Paul Tudor Jones, “The Great Monetary Inflation” Investor Letter, May 2020
“I like bitcoin even more now than I did then. I think we are in the first inning of bitcoin and it’s got a long way to go.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Squawk Box, October 2020
“Bitcoin has this enormous contingent of really, really smart and sophisticated people who believe in it. It’s like investing with Steve Jobs and Apple or investing in Google early.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Interview, October 2020
“Bitcoin is math. And math has been around for thousands of years. Two plus two is going to equal four, and it will for the next 2,000 years. I like the idea of investing in something that’s reliable, consistent, honest, and 100% certain.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Squawk Box, June 2021
“The only thing that I know for certain is I want to have 5% in gold, 5% in bitcoin, 5% in cash, 5% in commodities.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Squawk Box, June 2021
“From the beginning, I’ve always said I want to have a small allocation to it because it’s the only thing humans can’t adjust the supply in.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Squawk Box, May 2023
“I’ve never sat on a horse that long.” — Paul Tudor Jones, Blockworks / CNBC, May 2023
“I think all roads lead to inflation. I’m long gold. I’m long bitcoin. I think commodities are so ridiculously underowned.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Squawk Box, October 2024
“Bitcoin is very, very appealing right now.” — Paul Tudor Jones, CNBC Interview, October 2025
Involvement with Bitcoin
Paul Tudor Jones was among the first institutional heavyweights to put real capital behind Bitcoin. His May 2020 investor letter broke a psychological barrier on Wall Street — if Tudor Jones was buying Bitcoin, other allocators had permission to look at it seriously. His initial 1-2% allocation through Bitcoin futures in the Tudor BVI fund was a calculated, risk-managed entry that gave institutional investors a template for how to approach the asset class without recklessness.
When spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, Jones moved aggressively. SEC 13F filings reveal that Tudor Investment Corporation grew its position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) from 869,565 shares in mid-2024 to over 4.4 million shares by September 2024, worth approximately $160 million. By early 2025, the fund had nearly doubled again to 8.1 million IBIT shares — a position valued at roughly $445 million, representing approximately 4.5% of Tudor’s $9 billion portfolio. Bitcoin had become one of the largest non-options positions in the entire fund, ranking alongside holdings in the S&P 500 and Nvidia.
Jones’s institutional custodial relationships with Coinbase and Bakkt further demonstrated his commitment to integrating Bitcoin into traditional portfolio management infrastructure. His consistent public advocacy — reaffirming his position through multiple market cycles — has been credited with helping legitimize Bitcoin as a macro asset among professional allocators worldwide.
Media Appearances & Coverage
Paul Tudor Jones’s Bitcoin commentary has been a recurring feature on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where his interviews in October 2020, June 2021, May 2023, and October 2024 each moved markets and generated widespread coverage. His “Great Monetary Inflation” letter was published in full by CoinDesk and analyzed by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. His October 2024 declaration that “all roads lead to inflation” was covered by CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, CryptoSlate, Decrypt, Bitcoin Magazine, Benzinga, and Yahoo Finance. His growing IBIT position has been tracked through SEC filings and reported on by Decrypt, BeInCrypto, CryptoPotato, and The Motley Fool. Jones’s influence extends beyond crypto media — his macro views on Bitcoin as an inflation hedge are regularly cited in mainstream financial publications as a bellwether for institutional sentiment.
Notable Bitcoin Tweets
Paul Tudor Jones, legendary hedge fund manager and founder of Tudor Investment Corp, became one of the first major Wall Street figures to publicly endorse Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. His 2020 letter “The Great Monetary Inflation” was a watershed moment for institutional Bitcoin adoption.
“The best profit-maximizing strategy is to own the fastest horse. If I am forced to forecast, my bet is it will be Bitcoin.”
— @PaulTudorJones, May 2020
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“Bitcoin reminds me of gold when I first got into the business in 1976.”
— @PaulTudorJones, May 2020
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“My bet is it will be Bitcoin as the best inflation hedge. I’ve never sat on a horse that long, and I’m going to keep riding it.”
— @PaulTudorJones, October 2025
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Related Bitcoin Quotes
