Peter Thiel is known as the founder of Paypal
His politics and persona are at odds with his Silicon Valley origins. And, it's only intensified which became clear at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, where he was the keynote speaker and drew headlines for his strong take on the "finance gerontocracy" and singling out luminaries like Berkshire Hathaway's
Thiel was quite bullish on bitcoin and says that it could eventually be as big as the $12 trillion gold market or the $115 trillion public equity market. In his opening remarks, he rhetorically asked, "Why bitcoin has not yet gone up to $100,000 to a million dollars? Why has it not yet converged with gold or even with the equity markets more broadly?" It's a movement as a political question, whether this movement is going to succeed, or whether the enemies of the movement are going to succeed in stopping us."
This is Thiel's playbook, who likes to create epic us vs them narratives. He is looking to rally the energy and support of young people and pit them against the old guard. He also described bitcoin as being the most honest and efficient market in history.
Of course, others were saying that the congratulatory nature of the conference and very confident and bullish predictions about the future seemed more of a contrarian indicator. Further, bitcoin was down about 10% following this conference.
In contrast to Thiel, Buffett has been quite critical of bitcoin. He's called it "rat poison" and said it has no value at all. Dimon and Fink have also been critical, although it's understandable given their stewardship of the 2 largest financial institutions in the world.
Of course, reality is more complicated as Buffett has invested $1 billion into a digital bank that specializes in cryptocurrencies. Further, both JPMorgan and Blackrock have also started groups to work on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
