Bitcoin is the “Most Honest Market,” Peter Thiel says the New Highs Mean Central Banks Are Going Bankrupt

As Bitcoin hits new ATH at $67,000, the billionaire investor feels like he is ”underinvested” in it, which he believes can continue to go up because it is a rebuke to the world’s financial system.

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is very invested in the leading cryptocurrency, and as it hits a new all-time high at $67,000 this week, he is feeling the FOMO.

“You’re supposed to just buy Bitcoin,” he said to an assembled crowd in Miami. “I feel like I’ve been underinvested in it.”

The co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor further said that his only hesitation with investing in Bitcoin was that he thought “the secret was already known by everybody.” Still, the answer is to “go long” on the trillion-dollar asset class, and “maybe it still is enough of a secret,” he added.

“I don’t know that you should put all your money into bitcoin at $60,000 a bitcoin right now. But surely the fact that it is at $60,000 is an extremely hopeful sign.”

“It’s the canary in the coal mine. It’s the most honest market we have in the country, and it’s telling us that this decrepit … regime is just about to blow up.”

According to Thiel, the rise of cryptocurrencies is a reproach to the world’s financial system, which means Bitcoin can continue to go up. “But it surely tells us that we are at a complete bankruptcy moment for the central banks,” he said.

Speaking at an interview hosted by the Lincoln Network, a right-leaning nonprofit, Thiel also commented on artificial intelligence, saying, while crypto is a “force for decentralization,” the low-tech, surveillance form of AI by extension is “essentially communist – because it’s a force for centralization.”

But that doesn’t mean he wants to outlaw AI, just that people building it should “think about how they’re working on a technology that’s going to destroy the world.”

The venture capitalist also spoke against the central banks of the world, saying the US Federal Reserve is a “center-left institution that’s the most overvalued in the entire Western world.”

Now is the time where the “one-world state” stops, and with the help of crypto, “we’re going to succeed,” he said.

Elsewhere, Oaktree Capital Management co-founder Howard Marks talked about calling Bitcoin “worthless” in 2017, being a “knee-jerk skeptical reaction” to the cryptocurrency because “because of its newness.”

“We have the lowest prospect of returns in history,” said Marks, noting that a typical pension fund or an endowment needs about 7% a year return to make the math work. But

“most people have accepted that you can’t make 7% today safely and dependably and certainly not from stocks and bonds… So that means you have to push out the risk curve and go further afield right into new things or odd things.”