In addition, Peter Thiel feels that the original goal of Bitcoin—to be a cypherpunk, crypto-anarchist tool for freedom—hasn't been achieved.

Peter Thiel, the former CEO of PayPal, has voiced skepticism on the likelihood that the price of Bitcoin would rise much above its present levels.

Now that Bitcoin has seen its "ETF edition," the millionaire, who still owns "some" of the cryptocurrency but less than he "should have," is unsure of where the next wave of buyers will come from.

"I don't think it will increase that much further on." Founder of the Founders Fund Thiel, told CNBC on June 28, "We got the ETF edition, and I don't know who else buys it."

In October 2021, Thiel made a statement indicating that he was "underinvested" in Bitcoin. At the time, the cryptocurrency was heading towards its previous all-time high of $69,000, which was reached approximately three weeks later.

Thiel's Founders Fund, on the other hand, has a rather remarkable history with Bitcoin; it made its first investment in the cryptocurrency in 2014 and generated $1.8 billion in profit just before the market crashed in 2022.

Founders Fund then purchased an additional $100 million worth of Bitcoin in 2023 when its price was less than $30,000.

Bitcoin is not Cyberpunk

Thiel disclosed that Bitcoin's development hasn't gone as cypherpunk as he had anticipated.

"This idea of Bitcoin's ideological foundation as a cypherpunk, crypto-anarchist, libertarian, anti-centralized government thing is where I'm less convinced."

When Thiel originally learned about Bitcoin, he said, "That's what I thought was terrific about it."

He now thinks, though, that Bitcoin "doesn't really work that way."

"When FBI agents tell me that they would much rather see criminals use Bitcoin than $100 bills, it raises the possibility that something isn't quite working as intended."

Unlike Monero and other privacy-focused networks, Bitcoin was meant to be a public, permissionless, decentralized ledger; transactions were not meant to be entirely untraceable.

At $60,450, bitcoin is currently trading 1.8% lower than it was a day ago.