PayPal co-founder and one of Silicon Valley’s prominent venture capital investors Peter Thiel has warned that Bitcoin may well serve as a ‘Chinese financial weapon’ that could pose a threat to the United States. During a virtual seminar held by the US-based non-profit organization Richard Nixon Foundation, Thiel stated “Even though I’m a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether if at this point Bitcoin should also be thought of in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S where it threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the US dollar and China wants to do things to weaken it.”
“Even though I’m a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether if at this point Bitcoin should also be thought of in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.” says @Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.
More on cryptocurrencies from The #NixonSeminar: pic.twitter.com/sIUQTQEWgr
— Richard Nixon Foundation (@nixonfoundation) April 7, 2021
Thiel, who also co-founded software program corporation Palantir Technologies and is a Facebook board member as nicely, added that if China has a lengthy position on Bitcoin then the US should really concentrate on understanding its stance from a geopolitical point of view. “It’s sort of China’s long bitcoin, and perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the US should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works,” he stated. Theil’s conversation through the seminar was largely focused on US and China relations that have been tumultuous in the previous couple of years grabbing the spotlight in talks about trade, politics, military energy, technologies base, and more.
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Thiel recommended that the US should really ban China’s ByteDance-owned TikTok as it has been in India. “It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing if you shut it down it would be, you know, this economic catastrophe.” TikTok, Shareit, UC Browser, Likee, WeChat, and other individuals had been amongst the 59 apps in the initially batch that had been banned by the Indian government in June final year “in view of the information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order,” according to a statement by the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
According to a study titled Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by the University of Cambridge, China’s share in worldwide Bitcoin mining stood at about 65 per cent as of April 2020 even though the US accounted for only 7.2 per cent of worldwide bitcoin mining. Moreover, China also accounted for close to 80 per cent of the worldwide crypto trade, consuming an huge quantity of electrical energy that has a threat of undercutting its personal climate ambitions, according to a analysis paper published by the journal Nature Communications earlier this week. The study noted that China’s bitcoin mines will produce 130.5m metric tons of carbon emissions by 2024. This is close to to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Italy or Saudi Arabia.