Billionaire Peter Thiel says people are "underestimating" Bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin).” Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thiel compared the cryptocurrency to gold (TIKER: GC.COMEX.X2017), CNBC reported.
"I'm skeptical of most of cryptocurrencies, I do think people are a little bit underestimating Bitcoin, especially because it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments," said Thiel, who co-founded PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL).
"If Bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold it has a great potential left," he added.
Thiel said that “Bitcoin is based on the "security of the math" which means it can't be hacked and it's secure. The PayPal founder and venture capitalist compared some of Bitcoin's features to gold.
"Bitcoin is mineable like gold, it's hard to mine, it's actually harder to mine than gold. And so in that sense it's more constrained," Thiel said.