Cathie Wood, Peter Thiel, Laser Eyes Bull

• The Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami heard from some of the leading voices in the investment community. 
• Cathie Wood backed her view that bitcoin will go to $1 million, and Michael Saylor said Biden has given the “green light” to bitcoin.
• Peter Thiel took aim at Warren Buffett for his criticism of bitcoin. 

The Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami concludes Saturday and already has produced a number of notable developments and insights from leading voices in the investment community.

Here’s a roundup of some of the happenings from the conference. 

Peter Thiel 

The billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir labeled Warren Buffett as “enemy No. 1” for bitcoin fans during his keynote speech. He said the investing legend’s criticism of bitcoin has curbed wider adoption of the cryptocurrency and has weighed on its price. 

Calling him a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha,” Thiel had particularly harsh words for Buffett, whose comments about bitcoin include calling it “probably rat poison squared” in 2018 and saying it “has no unique value at all, it doesn’t produce anything” in 2019. 

Thiel also said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink were other members of a “finance gerontocracy” that opposes the “revolutionary youth movement” behind bitcoin. “This is what we have to fight for bitcoin to go 10x or 100x from here,” said Thiel, a personal investor in bitcoin and through his Founders Fund.

Cathie Wood 

The prominent tech stock investor still sees bitcoin’s price hitting $1 million in the next several years. On Friday, bitcoin was at $42,760 after recovering from its 2022 low.

“As many of you may know, in our big ideas 2022 … we have a price target in 2030 for Bitcoin of more than $1 million dollars per bitcoin,” said Wood, pointing the audience to the January 2022 call published on her Ark Invest website. “If you go in and you’ll see how we build that case … all we expect over the next eight years is that roughly two and a half percent of institutional assets are allocated to bitcoin.” 

“[That’s] how institutional investors work, they tiptoe in. In the 70s it was real estate,” and in the 1980s and 1990s it was emerging markets, she said. “And now I think it’s going to be crypto starting with bitcoin and that’s very important, starting with bitcoin.”

Michael Saylor 

The MicroStrategy CEO and bitcoin enthusiast sounded upbeat about the overall tone he’s hearing from Washington lately toward cryptocurrencies.

“I think a couple of weeks ago with the executive order, what we had was the president of the United States giving a green light to bitcoin,” he said as he sat next to Wood at their joint panel. Saylor was referring to President Joe Biden’s executive order in March for further work on developing a national policy on digital currencies. 

“If I scan the last 100 years of history, and I asked, ‘When is the last time the president of the United States directed the government to embrace a new asset class?’ The answer is never. So I think that bitcoin should be taking a victory lap for what happened here just in the past few weeks in the United States government,” Saylor said.

‘60%’ in bitcoin holdings for Mexican billionaire 

Mexico’s third-wealthiest person, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, told Bitcoin 2022 that he has big exposure to bitcoin in his liquid portfolio. 

“I have 60% in bitcoin and bitcoin equities and then 40% in hard-asset stock like oil and gas and gold miners and that’s where I am,” Salinas Pliego said on a panel. Pliego, who runs Mexican TV broadcaster TV Azteca and retailer Grupo Elektra, has a net worth of roughly $13 billion, according to Forbes.

What’s not in his portfolio? “I definitely don’t have any bonds,” he said, calling them a “terrible investment.”

Laser eyes bull 

To kick off the Bitcoin 2022 conference, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez unveiled “Miami Bull,” a statue of a black bull with so-called “laser eyes” to symbolize the city’s backing of bitcoin and as a challenge to Wall Street’s famous Charging Bull statue. 

Suarez has been vocal about Miami becoming the leading city for bitcoin investors and businesses interested in using bitcoin. The 3,000-pound statue stands 11-feet tall and required a team of more than 30 people and more than six months to complete.