PayPal’s Peter Thiel: ‘Longing’ Bitcoin Is ‘Hedge Against World Falling Apart’

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel described Bitcoin as

a hedge against the whole world falling apart

in new bullish comments March 15.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York quoted by CNBC, the Facebook and rumored $20 mln Bitcoin investor said that while he did not foresee Bitcoin fulfilling the role of a currency as yet, its ability to replace gold as a store of value was different.

I'm not talking about a new payments system,

he said

It's like bars of gold in a vault that never move, and it's a sort of hedge of sorts against the whole world going falling apart.

Bitcoin continues to trade around $8000 this week as continued downward pressure from regulators, Google and Mt. Gox sell-offs unsettle markets.

Thiel, less concerned with short-term price performance, appeared to suggest

longing

Bitcoin rather than shorting it was now key. Despite this, he gave a probability of up to 80 percent the world’s first cryptocurrency would ultimately become worthless.

I would be long bitcoin, and neutral to skeptical of just about everything else at this point with a few possible exceptions,

he continued.

There will be one online equivalent to gold, and the one you'd bet on would be the biggest.

Nonetheless, the now-infamous Bitcoin bull remains on the positive side of cryptoassets, not discounting the possibility that Ethereum or a future alternative could usurp Bitcoin’s number one status.

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