Billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel called Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink members of a “finance gerontocracy” opposed to a “revolutionary youth movement” that embraces Bitcoin.
In his keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami Thursday, April 7, Thiel blamed the finance titans for the digital currency’s failure to reach US$100,000, a benchmark popular among the asset’s die-hard supporters.
“What is it going to take for this to happen?” he asked, before pinning blame on Buffett, 91, whom he called a “sociopathic grandpa,” as well as Dimon, the 66-year-old CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Fink, 69, who runs BlackRock Inc. All three have said they’re sceptical of Bitcoin or digital currencies in general.
A spokesman for BlackRock said the company declined to comment on Thiel’s remarks. But he pointed to Fink’s letter to shareholders last month in which the CEO said a thoughtfully designed digital-payment system “can enhance the settlement of international transactions while reducing the risk of money laundering and corruption.” Digital currencies can also help bring down costs of cross-border payments, Fink wrote.
JPMorgan declined to comment, and a representative of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Bitcoin was little changed at US$43,470 as of 8:22 p.m. in New York.
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Thiel accused the trio of using investing practices focused on environmental, social and governance goals as a “hate factory” to undermine Bitcoin and other businesses.
Thiel, 54, also attacked central bankers including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
“Mr Powell -- people like that -- should be extremely grateful to Bitcoin because it’s the last warning they are going to get,” Thiel said. “They’ve chosen to ignore it, and they will have to pay the consequences for that in the years ahead.”
