Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel captivated the Bitcoin 2022 eccentic crowd Thursday with speech

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel pulled a $100 bill from his pocket and handed it to a lucky person among a group of eager people in the front row for his keynote Bitcoin 2022 speech. He then compared the U.S. currency to “toilet paper.”

That exemplified the kind of potent energy Thursday in the Miami Beach Convention Center during the first official day of what’s touted as the biggest Bitcoin conference in the world. It runs through Saturday and is expected to draw 30,000 people.

Upon arrival at the convention center, attendees are greeted at the front doors by the giant Miami Bull, a 3,000-pound futuristic statue modeled after Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull.

Cryptocurrency experts, enthusiasts and investors all circulated in a jubilant manner as they discussed market trends and ways to trade digital currency in Miami, a city that has emerged as a tech hub during the pandemic.

With an estimated worth of $5.3 billion, Thiel was clearly the star of the show Thursday. Before starting his venture capital firm Founders Fund, he and a partner started money-exchange platform PayPal.

During a 20-minute speech, Thiel, who was born in Germany in 1967 and after a Stanford University education briefly worked as a corporate lawyer before becoming an investor, gave a brief U.S. economic history. He delved into the 1970s, a period during which gold, cash and other investments were of minimal value.

He compared gold’s potential then and its reemergence in recent years as a popular form of investment, to Bitcoin’s current status. The audience of several hundred people roared in support.

“We are at the end of the fiat money regime,” he declared. “Central bankers should be grateful to Bitcoin, because it’s the last warning they’re going to get that they’ve chosen to ignore, and they will have to pay the consequences for that in the years ahead.”

Thiel expressed disdain for crypto “enemies,” such as Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, calling him “a sociopathic grandpa from Omaha” and corporate chieftains like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Buffett recently called Bitcoin “rat poison.” He considers Buffett and Dimon’s digital currency aversion to be a “deeply political choice.”

Thiel, who owns a mansion on Miami Beach, has recently made waves in Florida’s political circles as an ardent financial supporter of the Republican Party. While he did not speak about his political contributions and Sunshine State fundraising efforts, Thiel boasted about cryptocurrency’s potential to supersede government interference.

Many of the conference’s attendees listening to him seemed closer to the Everyman than Thiel in their financial stature. That did not keep them from holding on to his every word. He’s known to have devotees and a mystique about him that was apparent Thursday.

Thiel’s comments deriding potential regulation were timely given renewed talk in Congress to place guardrails around the trading of crypto like the popular Bitcoin.

This story was originally published April 7, 2022 8:41 PM.