Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel has questioned whether the future price of Bitcoin (BTC) can rise “dramatically” from current price levels.
The billionaire said he still owns “some” bitcoin, but not as much as he “should,” and he’s not sure where the next buyers will come from now that an “ETF version” of bitcoin has emerged.
“I don’t know if it’s going to go up dramatically from here. We got the ETF version, but I don’t know who else is going to buy it,” said Thiel, the Founders Fund founder. Said CNBC on June 28th.
“There’s probably still some upside potential, but it’s going to be volatile and unstable.”
NEW!!- Billionaire Peter Thiel:
I didn’t buy much #Bitcoin That’s what we should have done. pic.twitter.com/AtklzIw9ME
— Swan (@Swan) June 28, 2024
Thiel previously said he was “underinvested” in Bitcoin in October 2021 as the cryptocurrency was rising toward its all-time high of $69,000, which it hit about three weeks later.
But Thiel’s Founders Fund has a pretty impressive history with bitcoin, having first invested in the cryptocurrency in 2014 and made a $1.8 billion profit just before the market crashed in 2022.
Founders Fund then bought another $100 million worth of Bitcoin in 2023 when the cryptocurrency was below $30,000.
Bitcoin Isn’t So Cypherpunk
Thiel revealed that Bitcoin has not become as cypherpunk as originally envisioned.
“What I’m less convinced of is the question of whether Bitcoin’s ideological founding vision is cypherpunk, crypto-anarchist, libertarian, anti-centralized government.”
“That’s what I thought was great,” Thiel said, recalling his first encounter with Bitcoin.
Related: Fidelity exec says most investors should have some allocation to Bitcoin
But he now believes that Bitcoin “doesn’t really work that way.”
“When the FBI tells me that criminals are much more likely to use Bitcoin than $100 bills, it suggests that Bitcoin may not be working as expected.”
However, Bitcoin was designed to be a public, permissionless, decentralized ledger, and transactions were never intended to be completely untraceable like Monero and other privacy-focused networks.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $60,450, down 1.8% in the past 24 hours.
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