“Sociopathic Grandpa”
Peter Thiel insults Warren Buffett
04/08/2022 11:39 am
At this year’s Bitcoin conference, PayPal founder Peter Thiel is tackling the established financial elite – and he doesn’t shy away from legendary investor Warren Buffett. In his tirade in Miami, he also takes on JPMorgan and Blackrock.
In a speech at this year’s Bitcoin conference in Miami, the German-born billionaire and entrepreneur Peter Thiel blamed famous financial titans for the fact that the digital currency has not yet reached the equivalent of $ 100,000. He described the famous investor Warren Buffett and the CEOs of the American bank JP Morgan and the largest wealth manager Blackrock, Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink, as members of a “financial gerontocracy” opposed to a “revolutionary youth movement”. All three are generally skeptical about Bitcoin or digital currencies. Thiel did not say to what extent that would be enough to cap the Bitcoin price.
“Enemy number one,” Thiel said to a booing crowd, according to TV station CNBC, is “the sociopathic grandpa from Omaha.” Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, is based in Omaha. Thiel, who is said to have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin himself through venture firm Founders Fund in 2018, also didn’t spare Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink.
During his speech, Thiel presented large graphics with images of the two chief financial officers and their pessimistic comments about Bitcoin. The pictures all contained the word “gerontocracy” – i.e. the rule of the Council of Elders. According to CNBC, Thiel said of Dimon that his views are part of the “New York City banker bias”. Thiel also held up a photo of Buffett with the words “rat poison,” referring to the time the Berkshire CEO dismissed Bitcoin with that phrase. Another quote from Buffett was, “I don’t own any and never will.”
The Miami tirade is Thiel’s latest public attack on the people he believes are standing in the way of Bitcoin’s progress. “That’s what we need to fight for bitcoin to go 10 or 100 times from here,” CNBC quoted Thiel as saying. He added that these investors like blockchain, the technology underlying cryptocurrency, but feel the need to bring down bitcoin and its legitimacy. “If they choose not to invest in bitcoin, it is a deeply political decision,” Thiel said.
Berkshire Hathaway officials have not yet responded to Thiel’s comments, and a JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment. At Blackrock, a spokesperson for CNBC referred to comments Fink made in his letter to shareholders last month. He wrote that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could accelerate the adoption of digital currencies, saying that “a carefully designed global digital payments system can improve the settlement of international transactions while reducing the risk of money laundering and corruption.”