Bitcoin is ‘Very Underestimated’

Billionaire Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, told FOX Business while he’s skeptical of most cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is “very underestimated.”

“It’s like a reserve form of money. It’s like gold and it’s just a store of value. You don’t actually need to use it to make payment,” he told Maria Bartiromo during an interview at a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Bitcoin has soared to a record this year, up 500% and trading near the $6,000 level, as tracked by Coindesk.

There has been much debate by the world’s top bankers over how the virtual currency actually works. Unlike new money in a conventional financial system, bitcoin is not backed by any government or central bank, such as the Federal Reserve.

In September, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) called bitcoin a “fraud” and said it will eventually blow up.

“The currency isn’t going to work. You can’t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart,” Dimon said while speaking at an investor conference.

However, Thiel proposed a different take: “The argument it’s based on is the security of the math which tells you it can never be diluted by government… it can’t be hacked and it’s a form of money that’s… secure in an absolute way.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink (BLK) has called it an “index for money laundering,” and most recently, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed predicted it would implode.