Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel has expressed doubts about the potential for Bitcoin’s price to increase significantly from its current levels.
The billionaire — who still owns “some” Bitcoin but not as much as he “should have” — isn’t sure where the next batch of buyers will come from now that Bitcoin (BTC) has had its “ETF edition.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to go up that dramatically from here. We got the ETF edition, and I don’t know who else buys it,” Thiel, a founder of the Founders Fund, told CNBC on June 28.
“It probably still can go up some but it’s going to be a volatile, bumpy ride.”NEW‼️- Billionaire Peter Thiel:
I didn’t buy as much #Bitcoin as I should have. pic.twitter.com/AtklzIw9ME
— Swan (@Swan) June 28, 2024Thiel previously said he was “underinvested” in Bitcoin in October 2021, when the cryptocurrency was rallying towards its previous all-time high of $69,000, which was set about three weeks later.
However, Thiel’s Founders Fund has a rather impressive history with Bitcoin — having made its first Bitcoin investment in 2014 and profiting $1.8 billion shortly before the market collapsed in 2022.
Founders Fund then bought another $100 million in Bitcoin in 2023 when it was trading below $30,000.
Bitcoin isn’t that cypherpunk
Thiel revealed that Bitcoin hasn’t turned out as cypherpunk as he originally envisioned.
“Where I’m less convinced is this question of the ideological founding vision of Bitcoin as a cypherpunk, crypto-anarchist, libertarian, anti-centralized government thing.”“That’s what I thought was terrific about it,” Thiel recalled when first coming across Bitcoin.
Related: Fidelity exec says most investors should have some Bitcoin allocation
But he now believes Bitcoin “doesn’t really work that way.”
“When people in the FBI tell me that they’d much rather have criminals use Bitcoin than $100 bills it suggests that maybe it’s not quite working the way it was supposed to.”However, Bitcoin was designed to be a public, permissionless and decentralized ledger, and transactions weren’t intended to be completely untraceable like Monero and other privacy-focused networks.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $60,450, down 1.8% over the last 24 hours.
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