Peter Thiel had brought what he himself called an “enemy list” while speaking at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami Beach on Thursday. “We will bare them!” the tech investor promised the assembled crypto fans.
He then faded in a photo of 91-year-old investor Warren Buffet in his presentation. The “sociopathic grandpa,” as Thiel called him, has repeatedly expressed skepticism about Bitcoin and other crypto assets. Also on the list were 66-year-old Jamie Dimon, head of the largest US bank JP Morgan Chase, and 69-year-old Larry Fink, who runs the world’s largest wealth manager Blackrock.
This “financial gerontocracy”, which refuses to move its capital to the crypto market, is to blame for the fact that Bitcoin has still not broken the $100,000 threshold. He called companies that invest according to social and ecological premises “hate factories” against Bitcoin. Thiel also attacked the central banks because, in his view, they did not focus sufficiently on crypto technology. Bitcoin’s surge in value over the past few years “shows us that central banks are bankrupt.” The end of the current monetary system is near.
“It’s a revolutionary moment,” said Thiel. “We have to get out of this conference and take over the world.”
Crypto has become a matter of belief
This speech by one of the most influential businessmen in the world, wafting between motivational power talk, conspiracy whispers and political agitation, will probably go down in history as one of the highlights of a culture war that is currently building up in the tech and financial industries. Crypto yes or no, for many people it has long since ceased to be a question of what opportunities they calculate the technology to have, it is no longer a matter of weighing up opportunities and risks – it has become a question of commitment. Hence the attempt at this point to sort the fronts.
In the right corner of the ring are people like Peter Thiel. The 45-year-old is regarded as a pioneer of technophile ultra-liberalism: technology should liberate the world, above all from the state. He dreams of overcoming mortality and autonomous colonies on artificial islands in the sea. Judging by various statements, he sees democracy as a danger to capitalism. One of his first vehicles to enforce this ideology was Mark Zuckerberg, in whose Facebook platform he put half a million dollars early on, only to later sell the shares for a billion. Then he supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. In the meantime, in addition to his ongoing commitment to the Republicans, he has apparently found an even more promising vehicle: the crypto technology behind Bitcoin.
It should help to establish economic cycles and financial flows without central, controlling bodies – without banks, auditing companies, possibly also without authorities. Everything flows by itself, instead of people, computer codes ensure that the rules are followed.
The whole world should become a stock exchange
In the left corner of the ring, there is increasing resistance to this idea – which now explains the rhetorical intensification on the right. Originally, many critics of capitalism were also enthusiastic about Bitcoin. It ended up going against the banks. In the meantime, however, the idea of a completely new Internet, called Web3, which is less digestible for them, has prevailed, in which, to put it simply, everything should work like a cryptocurrency: pictures, videos, music, companies, rights – whatever can be represented digitally should be recorded as digital property and, at the same time, become tradable after being converted into digital coins. A bit as if the internet and the world represented in it were going public as a whole. An automated exchange. Whose rules are written by major crypto investors like Peter Thiel.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ventured out of cover last December. The frequently repeated promise that everyone would benefit from this super IPO because everyone could then buy coins is not true, he wrote on Twitter. “You don’t own Web3. It belongs to venture capital firms and their partners.” So the people who secured many of these coins early on – and now have an interest in getting others to get on board.
Youtuber Dan Olson brought up this argument shortly afterwards a widely acclaimed video on. Those who have already entered Web3 now have a “hot potato” in their hands. He or she paid money, possibly a lot of money, for an ultimately worthless piece of software code, such as a link to a digital image – and now, according to the Greater Fool theory, has to find an even bigger fool who will pay more to make the investment worth it calculates.
“Crypto Bros” are increasingly facing headwinds
Whether that’s true or not, many of the often young Web3 small investors use certain codes, such as laser eyes in their profile picture, to identify themselves as part of the conspiring crypto community. They cheer each other on there. Once you join, there is no turning back. The “Crypto Bros”, as they are derogatorily called, are frowned upon in many online communities. On the Tumblr platform broke out within a blog for funny little pictures, when it emerged that its founder had been involved in a crypto project with so-called NFTs (digital property rights), the blog was shut down. Fans of the computer game “Stalker” ran storm, when its manufacturer announced that it wanted to work with NFTs. Organize English football fans transparent against the “tokenization” (crypto coinage) of their clubs by the company Socios.
So is it, as he claims, the revolution of the young savages that Peter Thiel is leading? Youtuber Dan Olson has a different theory: he says they are critics of capitalism – those for whom capitalism hasn’t gone far enough.