Amid Thursday's Bitcoin 2022 conference taking place in Miami, tech investor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel burst into a long discourse surrounding the cryptocurrency ecosystem, pointing fingers at some of the biggest investors in finance. The event, which started on April 6th and ended on Apr. 9, brought Thiel out for a keynote address, wherein he called Warren Buffet a "sociopathic grandpa from Omaha."
The entrepreneur argues that the ecosystem around bitcoin has become tainted by a "finance gerontocracy." In layman's terms, a gerontocracy is essentially an embodiment of people, i.e. a group or country, that is ruled largely by the elderly. Thiel's long-winded complaints go so far as to put the blame on principals like the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) and banking institutions for limiting the outward potential of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general.
His speech first began by detailing the potential of bitcoin investing, highlighting the ever-volatile nature of the cryptocoin and its standing in future climates. However, shortly into his nearly 30-minute address, Thiel began to underscore his many complaints, even blaming Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, and Black Rock boardroom chair Larry Fink for diminishing and mitigating the outward thrust of cryptocurrencies.
"It's a movement, and it's a political question, whether this movement is going to succeed, or whether the enemies of a movement are going to succeed in stopping us. And, so I want to maybe end with an enemies list, a list of people who I think are stopping bitcoin. There's sort of a lot of them, they tend to have a nameless, faceless bureaucrat perspective, which is of course one of the ways they hide."
Thiel went on to relate that "this is what we have to fight for bitcoin to go 10x or 100x from here," showcasing the following slide that featured Buffet with the quotes "Rat Poison" and "I don't own any and I never will," the latter, of course, referring to the digital currency. Thiel's remarks paint a wide-sweeping initiative to bring the assets into a more broadened perspective. He coins naysayers who don't invest in bitcoin to make a "deeply political choice."
In terms of value and potential weight in cryptocurrency markets, Thiel eyes a future on par with the likes of the $100 trillion global equities market. The cryptocurrency market currently sits on an $830 billion valuation, with recent dips and ever-volatile realities on nefarious transactions allotting increasing skepticism in its overall acceptance across the board. But, Thiel claims the only way to enhance its growth is via the financial establishment's involvement and by stirring up the youth.
The tech entrepreneur likened the forthcoming bitcoin landscape to a literal war between the ideals of the "revolutionary youth movement" and the aforementioned ESG. Thiel says:
"If we had to summarize this in one frame, it is the finance gerontocracy that runs the country through whatever silly virtue signaling/hate factory term, like ESG, they have versus what I would think of as a revolutionary youth movement."
By painting Buffet as "enemy number one" and pointing fingers at some of the biggest names in the financial industry, Thiel is showcasing a prevailing perspective on leaving political insight at the door. Cryptocurrencies inherently adopt anonymity and decentralization at the core of their approach, with a key interest in the field largely due to its separation from governmental onlookers.
Thiel closes his address with, "And, we have to just go out from this conference and take over the world."
