Written by: Zz, ChainCatcher

In July 2025, an SEC document set off a sensation in the crypto world: Peter Thiel 's entity quietly acquired 9.1% of BitMine Immersion Technologies' shares, becoming the largest investor in the Ethereum vault. As soon as the news came out, BitMine's stock price soared, reaching a high of 29.3% during the session.

X platform exploded: PayPal gangster godfather finally took action against Ethereum, Peter Thiel turned from Bitcoin? Is this to copy MicroStrategy's gameplay?

The market is so agitated, and it is not groundless. Just a year ago, Peter Thiel was still publicly questioning Bitcoin: We already have ETFs, and I don’t know who will buy them. When the army of institutions has entered the market, who can drive the next wave? From Bitcoin to heavy investment in Ethereum, what is this Silicon Valley billionaire playing?

The ambition behind holding $1 billion worth of ETH

BitMine's ambition is to become the Ethereum version of MicroStrategy. On July 14, 2025, BitMine held $500 million worth of Ethereum (163,142 ETH). Three days later, this number doubled to $1 billion and 300,657 ETH. Even in the crypto world, this accumulation speed is crazy.

But Peter Thiel is eyeing more than just another corporate treasury. In 2023, Founders Fund revealed his investment portfolio with a move: investing $200 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum, half each. This allocation itself is a signal that Ethereum has become equal to Bitcoin.

In addition to BitMine's heavy blow, Peter Thiel's layout in the Ethereum ecosystem has already quietly begun:

Trading infrastructure : Invest in Bullish Exchange in 2021, with Peter Thiel serving as senior advisor.

Compliance infrastructure : Invest in Paxos (a regulated stablecoin issuer) in 2024, and continue to increase investment in Ubyx in 2025, aiming to become the Visa of the stablecoin field.

DeFi Infrastructure : Lead investment in Avantis in June 2025, specializing in on-chain derivatives.

Layer-2 expansion : Invest in Caldera. When the mainnet gas fee remains high, Layer-2 is the key to making DeFi truly usable.

Bitcoin is digital gold, and Ethereum is a new financial market. An investor close to Founders Fund revealed that it is enough to store value and buy Bitcoin. But to control the future financial infrastructure, you need Ethereum.

This judgment is well-founded. While Bitcoin is still struggling with the value storage vs. payment issue, Ethereum has become: the main battlefield of DeFi (with a locked value of over $100 billion), the preferred platform for stablecoins (USDT and USDC are mainly circulated on Ethereum), and the base layer for the tokenization of RWA (real world assets).

More importantly, Ethereum can generate interest, which is something Bitcoin cannot do. BitMine's Ethereum treasury strategy is aimed at this point, allowing assets to generate cash flow.

Peter Thiel's ambitions do not stop there: Bullish Exchange secretly submitted an IPO (June 2025), supported the creation of Erebor Bank (which plans to hold stablecoins) that specializes in serving crypto companies, and controlled the industry's discourse power through CoinDesk. The picture is clear: he is no longer satisfied with holding assets, but wants to control the channels through which assets flow.

The proportion of Ethereum ecosystem in Founders Fund's blockchain investment portfolio is also gradually increasing. If 2014-2022 was Peter Thiel's Bitcoin era, focusing on value storage and ideological narratives, then after 2023, he officially entered the Ethereum era and built a practical financial infrastructure.

Bitcoin won the war of ideas, but Ethereum will win the practical application. When central bank digital currencies, corporate stablecoins, and tokenized securities become a reality, they will all run on Ethereum.

Peter Thiel holds BitMine shares through various entities, not just investing, but also preparing for control. If BitMine becomes the largest corporate Ethereum holder, Peter Thiel will actually become the shadow central bank of the Ethereum ecosystem. From PayPal to Bitcoin, and then to Ethereum, Peter Thiel's dream of a financial empire has never changed, only the tools are constantly evolving.

Leading Founders Fund started building a position in Bitcoin when it was $1,000

When Bitcoin was still hovering around $1,000, Founders Fund had already started building a position. According to insiders, the first investment reached tens of millions of dollars, which was considered radical among institutional investors at the time.

But Peter Thiel's ambitions go beyond this. In 2013, he invested in Block.one (which later developed EOS). Although EOS ultimately failed to shake Ethereum, this investment revealed his true intention: he didn't want Bitcoin itself, but the next Bitcoin.

What is even more intriguing is his layout path:

Mining : Investing in BitMine in 2025 is just the latest move. As early as 2018, it participated in Layer1 financing.

Trading side : Before Bullish, he was an early investor in Kraken. Compared with Coinbase's compliance approach, Kraken maintains a more cypherpunk style, which is very Peter Thiel.

Infrastructure : In 2021, when everyone was chasing DeFi tokens, Founders Fund quietly invested in Voltage to provide infrastructure for the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Peter Thiel's understanding of Bitcoin is far more than just digital gold. In April 2021, he expressed his opinion in a conversation with former Secretary of State Pompeo: Bitcoin may be a financial weapon used by China to weaken the US dollar.

The cryptocurrency community was in an uproar. Supporters called him a traitor, while opponents called him a conspiracy theorist. However, if you put this statement in the context of Peter Thiel's overall ideology, the logic becomes clear: Bitcoin is not only an investment product, but also a geopolitical tool that can take the initiative in the new financial war.

Interestingly, just one year later, he changed his tune at the Bitcoin conference, describing it as a revolutionary weapon against financial gerontocracy. He even listed his enemies: Buffett, BlackRock's Larry Fink , and JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon.

When facing conservatives, he talks about national security. When facing the crypto community, he talks about the liberal revolution. What remains unchanged is the core goal: to promote a new order independent of the traditional financial system. This precisely shows Peter Thiel's core trait: using narrative as a weapon.

The results are remarkable: he liquidated his positions in time before the crypto winter in 2022, making a profit of $1.8 billion; when Bitcoin fell to $30,000 in 2023, he bought $100 million. A textbook example of buying low and selling high.

Interesting detail: In July 2024, when the Bitcoin ETF was launched and institutional funds entered the market in large numbers, Peter Thiel publicly stated that he was not sure it would rise much from here. The real weapon will never be an ETF that everyone can buy.

Behind all the layouts is the unfulfilled dream of currency

Looking at Founders Fund's investment portfolio, the pattern is clear: almost no investment in DApps, no touch on GameFi, and only a brief taste of NFT. What they are really interested in are: Layer2 expansion solutions (Caldera), compliance infrastructure (Paxos), derivatives protocols (Avantis), and stablecoin networks (Ubyx). Protocols are better than products, this is Peter Thiel's creed.

Back in 1998, when 23-year-old Peter Thiel and Max Levchin founded PayPal, what was their original vision? Not to be a payment tool, but to create a new form of currency.

As early as ten years before the birth of Bitcoin, Peter Thiel was thinking about how to subvert the monetary system. PayPal even developed a PalmPilot application in the early days that could transmit digital cash via infrared. In the end, due to regulatory pressure, it had to transform into a traditional payment company.

In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. The first thing Peter Thiel did after cashing out was to found Clarium Capital to systematically look for the next currency revolution opportunity. He waited for 12 years.

In 2014, when Peter Thiel first took a serious look at Bitcoin, he saw not electronic cash, but the unfulfilled dream of PayPal. We live in a world where bits are not regulated but atoms are regulated. Peter Thiel summed it up this way in 2015. The subtext is: in the digital world, you can build anything, including a completely new financial system.

In "Zero to One", Peter Thiel repeatedly stressed that competition is a loser's game, and monopoly can bring excess profits. PayPal's experience taught him that it is almost impossible to establish a financial monopoly in the traditional world. Regulation will strangle you, and big banks will encircle you. Cryptocurrency has changed the rules of the game.

How to build a monopoly in a decentralized world? The answer is: control the underlying infrastructure. When everyone builds on Ethereum, owning Ethereum is equivalent to collecting rent. When all transactions require stablecoins, controlling the stablecoin protocol is equivalent to printing money. When regulation finally comes, owning a compliance license is equivalent to holding an entry ticket.

Peter Thiel even funded key figures in this revolution. In 2014, his Peter Thiel Fellowship gave 19-year-old Vitalik Buterin $100,000, which enabled him to drop out of the University of Waterloo and develop Ethereum full-time. In a sense, Peter Thiel not only invested in infrastructure, he also invested in the people who built the infrastructure.

This explains why Peter Thiel wants to lay out both Erebor Bank (traditional license) and DeFi protocol (decentralized finance). No matter which path he takes in the future, he will be a winner. The deeper reason may be: in his view, cryptocurrency is not PayPal 2.0, but what PayPal should be, a truly free global financial system that is not controlled by any government.

Now, Peter Thiel's crypto empire is taking shape

Peter Thiel in 2025 is no longer content to be a passive coin holder. Through BitMine, Bullish, and Erebor, he is building a complete crypto-financial empire.

At this point, a question arises: Why is Peter Thiel so radical when traditional financial giants are still waiting and watching? Perhaps the answer lies in his words in 2015: We live in a world where bits are not regulated but atoms are regulated.

For Peter Thiel, cryptocurrency is not only a financial revolution, but also the ultimate tool for building an unregulated world of bits. Now is the time to bet.

After all, as his good friend, Tesla CEO Musk said: The best adventure is a calculated adventure. In the ultimate adventure of cryptocurrency, Peter Thiel's calculations have just begun.