PayPal CEO fears China could leverage Bitcoin as a weapon

PayPal chief executive Peter Thiel has raised concerns that China could use Bitcoin as a financial weapon against the US

PayPal CEO Peter Thiel yesterday revealed that he feared Bitcoin could be used by China as a weapon against the US. Thiel, a Bitcoin maximalist, argued that the Chinese might use the flagship crypto to undermine the power of the US dollar. Speaking at a roundtable held by the Richard Nixon Foundation, the renowned venture capitalist laid bare his worries suggesting China couldn’t be trusted.

He claimed that the country could leverage Bitcoin’s characteristics to subvert the US dollar.

“Even though I’m sort of a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought of as a Chinese financial weapon against the US,” he said.

In his opinion, Bitcoin poses a threat to fiat currencies, none more so than the US dollar. Thiel went on to say that it is imperative for US strategists to adopt an uncompromising approach to Bitcoin projects from a geopolitical standpoint.

The PayPal boss further implied that China could use the Euro to thwart the US dollar’s hegemonic power and give China control of the world economy.

“From China’s point of view, they don’t like the US having this reserve currency because it gives us a lot of leverage […]. They don’t want the Renminbi to become a reserve currency because then you have to open your capital account and do all sorts of things they really don’t want to do. I think the Euro you could think is in part a Chinese weapon against the dollar”.

Thiel touched on China’s digital RMB, the Digital Currency Electronic Payment, labelling it as a ‘totalitarian measuring device’ that is incomparable with any cryptocurrency. His comments on the digital RMB show detestation since many countries, including the US, are working on digital currencies similar to China’s.

He also expressed disappointment that companies in the US tech hub [Silicon Valley] didn’t consider China a rival. The PayPal chief censured giant US tech companies Apple and Google for closely associating with China. He called out the former for having ‘synergies’ with China and the latter for being friendly when dealing with China.

This is not the first time Thiel has been against China’s dominance on the matter of Bitcoin. In October 2019, the entrepreneur poured $50 million into the Bitcoin mining firm Layer1 Technologies to nullify China’s dominance in the mining sector.