Bitcoin may be weaponized by China.

Sounds serious, and a billionaire venture capitalist believes the U.S. dollar is the target of the assault.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund, spoke during an event for the Richard Nixon Foundation – covered by and reported on by Bloomberg News – and explained his feelings about China and bitcoin.

Bitcoin “threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar,” Thiel said, also adding:

“Even though I’m a pro-crypto, pro-bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether at this point, bitcoin should also be thought (of) in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”

Thiel said China wants the dollar removed from the role of the default global reserve currency and is trying to raise bitcoin’s profile further.

“(If) China’s long bitcoin, perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works,” he said.

China now has a different cryptocurrency — a blockchain-enabled, digital version of the yuan — but Thiel said, “That’s not a real cryptocurrency, that’s just some sort of totalitarian measuring device,” he said.

Thiel wants the U.S. to increase pressure on China, too, and follow India’s example of banning TikTok, the Chinese social app. Removing TikTok, he said, would inspire other versions of the app. Thiel said, “I don’t think it was like a tremendous, tremendous loss” in India.

The bitcoin roll continued Thursday. At midday ET its price was nearing $58,000 and again approaching its record high price of $60,738. The price of bitcoin is up 95% year to date, and up a 674% over the past 12 months.

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