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Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel is worried that China is using bitcoin to undermine the U.S.
In comments Tuesday during a virtual event for the Richard Nixon Foundation, and first reported by Bloomberg News, the co-founder of PayPal
PYPL,
Palantir Technologies
PLTR,
and Founders Fund said bitcoin “threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar.”
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“Even though I’m a pro-crypto, pro-bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether at this point, bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”
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Thiel said China would like to see two global reserve currencies, rather than the dollar being the default reserve currency. But China doesn’t want its renminbi to fill that role, and in the past has used the euro “in part” as a weapon against the dollar. That hasn’t worked, so now China is trying to elevate bitcoin, Thiel argued.
“[If] China’s long bitcoin, perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works,” he said.
Also see: U.S. is ‘behind the curve’ on crypto regulations, says SEC Commissioner Peirce
China recently launched a blockchain-enabled, digital version of its currency, the yuan, but Thiel dismissed that move. “That’s not a real cryptocurrency, that’s just some sort of totalitarian measuring device,” he said.
Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
on Wednesday was above $56,000 and again approaching its record high price of $60,738, according to Coindesk. The price of bitcoin is up 95% year to date, and up a whopping 674% over the past 12 months.
