Thiel Criticizes Crypto Skeptics

"Silicon Valley venture capitalist and bitcoin investor Peter Thiel lashed out at Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink, contending that they constitute a "financial gerontocracy" that conspires to hold down the price of the cryptocurrency.

Mr. Thiel, 54 years old, made the comments Thursday at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, which the city has billed as the nation's largest. He named the men, who rank among some of the top investors and most visible executives in the U.S., as "enemies" of bitcoin.

Bitcoin's price was up 1% on Friday at around $43,960, which is in line with its trading range this year but is six times its level two years ago.

Mr. Buffett is the 91-year-old chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Dimon, 66, is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., which declined to comment. Mr. Fink, 69, is the CEO of New York investment firm BlackRock Inc., which didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

All three have been publicly skeptical of the value of the cryptocurrency. Mr. Buffett, a longtime "value investor" who seeks to take stakes in firms at what he views as discounted prices, in the past has called bitcoin "rat poison squared."

Mr. Thiel told the crowd that the men should be allocating investments to bitcoin.

When they choose not to, "that is a deeply political choice and we have to push back on that," he said.

Mr. Thiel rose to prominence in the early 2000s as one of the founders of PayPal Holdings Inc., which he led as CEO until eBay Inc. acquired it in October 2002 for $1.5 billion. From his time at the electronic-payments platform, Mr. Thiel became one of the most visible members of the "PayPal Mafia," a group of early employees that included Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, who have since gone on to found and invest in other notable tech companies.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2018 that the Founders Fund, the venture-capital firm co-founded by Mr. Thiel, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin before its sharp rise during the pandemic.

Founders and Mr. Thiel, 50 years old, are well-known for early investments in companies like Facebook Inc. that sometimes take years to come to fruition. Founders bought around $15 million to $20 million in bitcoin, the Journal reported, a stake that is now worth many times that.

Mr. Thiel has also become a prominent conservative in mostly liberal Silicon Valley. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016, where he criticized the state of the economy and described Donald Trump as a man set to rebuild America." [1]

1. EXCHANGE --- Thiel Criticizes Crypto Skeptics
Telesca, Jenna.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 09 Apr 2022: B.11.