Bitcoin as Sino Coin
Peter Thiel warns US national security hawks about Bitcoin's connection to China
Full Stack
PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel warns US national security hawks about Bitcoin and its connection to China
A division of the Richard Nixon Foundation, which effectively runs the palatial library in California dedicated to the 37th President of the United States, recently hosted Peter Thiel, chairman of Thiel Capital, for an in-depth discussion.
Hosts included Nixon Seminar board member and former Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a chat titled, Big Tech and China: What Do We Need from Silicon Valley?
Co-host and former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien asked about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and how worried the US should be in terms of competitiveness. Thiel shifted to a mention of Bitcoin, which seemed to spark immediate interest from the hosts, moderator, and audience.
“I’ve had this riff,” Thiel mused, “where people often say ‘crypto’ or Bitcoin is a vaguely libertarian technology. … Technology is politically neutral, but … if crypto is kind of libertarian, AI is kind of communist. And so, even though we are ahead of basic science of AI, China is willing to apply it and turn the entire society into a face recognition surveillance state that is far more intrusive and totalitarian than even Stalinist Russia was. That is something we are not willing to do. It is a two-edged thing in that way.”
O’Brien seized Thiel’s observation, luring the discussion toward what appeared to be worry about an economically and militarily growing China -- subjects beyond the scope of this newsletter.
Nixon’s grandson, lawyer Christopher Cox, asked about China’s creation of a state-backed digital currency (see Quick Bites, below), wondering “how much of a threat is that to the dollar and its dominance of world markets? And if it is a threat, what can we do about it?”
Thiel was careful to distinguish the on-purpose surveillance point of a China Coin, “presumably one that … China envisions is … can be monitored even more granularly than the way they’re being monitored currently.” He also wondered aloud about the spectre of replacing the world’s de facto reserve currency, the USD.
“From China’s point of view,” Thiel insisted, “they don’t like the U.S. having this reserve currency, because it gives us a lot of leverage over Iranian oil supply chains and all sorts of things like that. They … don’t want the renminbi to become reserve currency, because then you have to open your capital account and you have to do all sorts of things they really don’t want to do. I think the Euro, you can think of is in part a Chinese weapon against the dollar. Last decade has not worked out that way, but China would have liked to see the two reserve currencies like the Euro.”
Thiel continued, describing himself as “sort of a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person” openly questioning “whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought in part of as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S. where it threatens FIAT money but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar and China wants to do things to weaken it. If China’s long Bitcoin, perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works.”
Pompeo then weighed-in on the topic, noting China was merely “digitizing their currency,” a process separate “from Bitcoin, [and] still a FIAT currency, Chinese money that they are now digitizing,” agreeing with Thiel it will have a “huge impact for their surveillance capacity.” He admitted, “The United States has a project, we’re working on it too. But we will be slow off the gate. It has a lot of implications for us here at home.”
Is US surveillance coin coming soon? 👀
Quick Bites
China’s Cyber Yuan is Born
James Areddy of The Wall Street Journal revealed a milestone in the evolution of currency, China’s digital yuan:
“Digitized money could reorder the fundamentals of finance the way Amazon.com Inc. disrupted retailing and Uber Technologies Inc. rattled taxi systems. … The digital yuan resides in cyberspace, available on the owner’s mobile phone—or on a card for the less tech-savvy—and spending it doesn’t strictly require an online connection. It appears on a screen with a silhouette of Mao Zedong, looking just like the paper money.”
(Here are my thoughts on this new government surveillance tool. -Naomi)
Signal MobileCoin Goes Beta
Privacy-centric messaging application Signal launched a beta of its payment addition, MobileCoin. It is “designed to be used as digital cash on your phone,” a proprietary blurb reads. “It's easy to use with near instantaneous transactions. Our team holds a wealth of expertise in cryptography, mobile, and telecom, with the founder of signal as an advisor. We're user and privacy focused.”
Monero’s Riccardo Spagni, known online as fluffypony, characterized the move by Signal as “Very, very disappointing. MobileCoin claims to be based on CryptoNote, but it’s not. It’s based on Monero,” lamenting, “Not sure why there’s no credit where credit is due?” Whatever the case, details under the hood of MobileCoin can be found here.
In all, Signal adopting a privacy coin for payments is great news.
Playboy and NTFs: The Perfect Match
Venerable legacy smut peddlers Playboy announced their excitement over a partnership with Nifty Gateway, Gemini’s digital arts platform. Playboy will team in their first NFT offering with Boston-based digital collage artist Mike Parisella, the man behind Slimesunday. “We have much more in store as well,” Playboy continued, “including curated NFT art collections from our nearly 70-year archive of art and photography. We are thrilled by all of the innovation and access the blockchain can bring, and a big piece of our work will be supporting artists as a collector and via upcoming grants. We’re here to learn, support the community and innovate together.”
GoDaddy Lists Bitcoin.com Domain for Sale
Bitcoin maximalist Jameson Lopp gleefully alerted the ecosystem to what would have been a gigantic find: sale of the vaunted Bitcoin.com domain. A screenshot shows the address was indeed listed by GoDaddy, with starting bids at $100,000,000. In fact, Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver explained, some kind of mistake or prank had taken place. Ver apparently contacted the company’s help desk, asking, “Why are you listing my domain for sale? It isn’t for sale. Please remove this fake news that is damaging my real brand.” The listing was soon removed without public comment from GoDaddy.
Everything That’s Wrong With America’s Inept Regulatory State in One Sentence
Ryan Selkis, founder of crypto research firm Messari, highlighted blockchain-based decentralized media platform LBRY’s frustration at dealing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ... which eventually resulted in a SEC formal complaint filed against LBRY. “Everything that's wrong with America's inept regulatory state in one sentence,” Selkis charged. LBRY posted Frequently Asked Questions about its plight, asking “Did LBRY Inc make an attempt to settle?” and “Did LBRY Inc ask how to operate legally?” To the latter, Selkis noted, LBRY answered, “We repeatedly asked the SEC for guidance on how it would be possible to run the company legally. The SEC said that they could not tell us how to operate legally, but could only tell us that we were breaking the law.”
You can sign the petition to support LBRY’s fight here.
By C. Edward Kelso, NBTV contributor.
Find more of Kelso’s work here: @coinfugazi / coinfugazi.com