PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel warned that the Chinese central government may be backing Bitcoin as a means of hurting US foreign and monetary policy.
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But, he added, that the Chinese government tried to use the euro in the same way.
Speaking at a virtual event organized by the Richard Nixon Foundation, a conservative non-profit organization, Thiel commented on whether the digital currency issued by China’s central bank, or CBDC, could threaten the position of the US dollar as a reserve currency. world.
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Although Thiel, who is known to be pro-Bitcoin, suggested that an “internal stablecoin in China” will amount to little more than “some kind of totalitarian measuring device,” he added that China may view Bitcoin as a tool to erode. the hegemony of the dollar.
“From China’s point of view, they don’t like that the US has this reserve currency, because it gives a lot of advantage over oil supply chains and all sorts of things like that,” he said, adding:
“Although I am a pro-cryptocurrency person, pro-Bitcoin maximalist, I wonder if at this point Bitcoin should also be seen in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the US where it threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the US dollar. “
Thiel alluded to Chinese efforts to denominate oil operations in euros in recent years in an attempt to undermine the global position of the dollar, stating: “I think you can think of the euro as part of a Chinese weapon against the dollar; the last decade didn’t really work out that way, but China would have liked to see two reserve currencies, like the euro. “
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The venture capitalist speculated that China really does not want its renminbi to become the world’s reserve currency, noting that the government would have to “open its capital accounts” among other measures “that it really does not want to do.”
Therefore, Thiel concludes that support for Bitcoin offers China an elegant means to weaken the position of the dollar internationally:
“China wants to do things to weaken [the dollar], China is in favor of Bitcoin, and perhaps, from a geopolitical perspective, the US should ask some tougher questions about how exactly it works.”
