"Even though I'm pro-cryptocurrency, pro-Bitcoin," said Thiel. "I wonder if at this point Bitcoin should also be considered in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the United States, where it threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the US dollar."
The question that Thiel was supposedly answering was not about Bitcoin itself, but about China's plan to create a digital yuan. Moderator Hugh Hewitt wanted to know if the digital yuan is a "threat to the dollar and its dominance of world markets".
Thiel's opinion is that it is not; he discarded the currency, which would be issued by China's central bank, as "a kind of totalitarian measuring device".
The real concern, Thiel said, is Bitcoin, because it is more likely to serve as a functional reserve currency. The less dominant the dollar, the less affected by American monetary and foreign policy.
The seminar, entitled “Big Tech and China: What do we need from Silicon Valley?”, Also included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien.
Pompeo agreed that a digital yuan “has a huge impact on [China's] surveillance capacity”, although he seems to claim that such a currency would also allow for international transactions that could avoid US sanctions: “They want to make sure that when the secretary Pompeo to issue sanctions against the Iranian leadership, there will be a way to buy Iranian oil. “
Thiel has invested in several cryptocurrency ventures, including Bitcoin mining company Layer1 Technologies and the blockchain development platform Alchemy.
