Peter Thiel, the most legendary venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, has shifted his focus to cryptocurrency after AI and space. More specifically, he is targeting stablecoins.
Unlike his previous strategy of "investing early and betting on the future," this time he is not just a backroom financier but is personally involved in building a rigorously structured, highly compliant, and closed-loop "stablecoin empire."
This represents a "new encirclement" of the dollar hegemony system and a significant evolution of venture capital logic. Bullish is the sharpest front line of this empire.
The Top 5 Exchanges Holding Bitcoin Are Going Public
On July 19, a piece of news ignited the nerves of the crypto market: Bullish, an exchange incubated by Block.one, invested in by Peter Thiel, and led by former NYSE president Tom Farley, officially submitted its IPO application to the SEC, planning to list on the NYSE under the code "BLSH."
Its most eye-catching label consists of just two words: Bitcoin.
Bullish holds over 24,000 bitcoins, which, at current prices, ranks its bitcoin assets among the top five of publicly listed companies worldwide. This not only becomes the "hard currency" for its IPO roadshow but also symbolizes the quiet emergence of a new financial order built on crypto assets.
However, Peter Thiel's ambitions go far beyond simply "listing with holdings."
A New School of Crypto That "Doesn't Tell Stories, Only Talks Compliance"
In contrast to Solana discussing TPS, Ethereum focusing on ecosystems, and LayerZero on interoperability, Bullish does not engage in "technical narratives." Instead, it has chosen a colder, harder, and more asset-heavy path: compliance.
In the past two years, the crypto world has experienced a reversal: narratives have failed, and regulation has arrived. The aftershocks of the FTX collapse are still ongoing, and the "tech bull market" is gone for good. In its place is the "compliance premium era," represented by Circle, where the more thorough the compliance, the more licenses obtained, the higher the valuation.
Bullish is a replicator of Circle's path, even more aggressive. By 2025, Bullish secured both the German BaFin and Hong Kong VATP licenses, proving its trading capabilities and laying the groundwork for its future stablecoin business and banking expansion. The German BaFin license allows it to provide custody and prime brokerage services, while the Hong Kong VATP opens a legal channel to the Asian market.
In summary, Bullish's core competitive advantage is: it is not the Uniswap of the crypto world, but the Goldman Sachs of the crypto space.
A Dual Closed Loop of "Compliance Exchange + Stablecoin Bank"
Beyond Bullish, Thiel's other crypto venture is the yet-to-be-listed digital banking project Erebor. Unlike traditional crypto banks, Erebor has a very clear goal: to serve as the central node of a stablecoin clearing network. Its positioning is akin to "Visa + Swift" in the crypto world, capable of supporting cross-border payments, on-chain asset custody, and the global circulation of dollar-pegged assets.
If Bullish is the front end of crypto assets, then Erebor is the back end of the financial system. The monetary foundation of this system is built by Thiel's other venture, the stablecoin project Ubyx. Ubyx aims to develop a stablecoin clearing protocol, not to replace USDC, but to fill the gap in its systemic clearing capabilities. It functions more like a "control room" for stablecoins, potentially providing backend support for the entire dollar stablecoin ecosystem in the future.
Along with his investment in the compliant stablecoin issuer Paxos through Founders Fund, Thiel has constructed a "trinity" of stablecoin closed loops:
- Paxos: Stablecoin issuance;
- Ubyx: Stablecoin clearing;
- Erebor: Stablecoin bank;
- Bullish: Stablecoin trading venue.
This model resembles a hybrid of PayPal, Visa, and JPMorgan in the Web3 space.
4. After the GENIUS Act: The Legally Encroaching Crypto Financial Empire
Just a month before Bullish submitted its IPO application, the U.S. passed the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, clarifying the regulatory path for stablecoin issuance, asset reserves, and market structure. This means the crypto industry will transition from a gray area to clear operations. Whoever can obtain licenses the fastest will have new "dollar entry rights."
Thiel's bets on Bullish and Erebor are not just investments at the company level but also early deployments for a "new dollar order." In this evolution of the financial system stemming from dollar dominance, stablecoins serve as channels, credit, and control. Whoever controls stablecoins holds the keys to the monetary valves of the Web3 era. Thiel clearly understands this; his "stablecoin empire" revolves around the technological evolution of "dollar re-decentralization."
5. Thiel's Fine Design of Ecological Control: "Media + Trading + Banking," a Unified Digital Financial Layout
In 2023, Bullish acquired one of the largest media platforms in the crypto industry, CoinDesk. This transaction is not a mere "convenient purchase," but a standard "monopoly on discourse": Bullish controls the market entry (exchange), data exit (CoinDesk), and asset clearing (Erebor), along with investments in mining company BitMine and bank Paxos, forming a "data + trading + asset" triple encirclement structure.
CoinDesk attracted 55 million annual visitors in 2024, with Bullish's CEO directly taking over its operations, allowing the entire crypto market's discourse, information, and financial activities to circulate within one empire.
Peter Thiel is not just investing in crypto companies; he is building a "crypto nation."
6. From the PayPal Gang to the Iron Throne of Crypto Finance
In his early years, Peter Thiel rose to prominence by founding PayPal, joining forces with Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Max Levchin to form the famous "PayPal Mafia." That was the starting point of digital payments and Thiel's first encounter with "currency control."
Now, he is transforming the "payment cognition" accumulated from the PayPal era into a new monetary proposition for the Web3 world. It is not just about recreating a payment tool but directly controlling the currency, channels, and clearing rights of the payment system.
This is not ordinary investment and innovation; it is a reconstruction of institutional hierarchy. He has not monetized platform traffic like Coinbase or engaged in leveraged derivatives like FTX, but has chosen the least sexy yet most profound route: starting from "fiat currency backing," redefining the issuance, circulation paths, and regulatory structure of dollar credit in the crypto world.
7. The Stablecoin War Has Just Begun
Currently, the stablecoin market is still dominated by Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), but both face significant challenges: Tether is the largest but continues to face transparency and regulatory controversies; Circle is compliant but experiencing slowed growth and narrative fatigue.
Thiel's empire strategy combines compliance and systemicity. It includes stablecoin issuance plans, on-chain clearing, bank integration, trading loops, and data distribution. In other words, he does not aim to "replace" USDC but to redefine a "national infrastructure for dollar stablecoins." This also means that in the coming years, stablecoins will no longer be just a product but a national strategic asset. Whoever can stand on this new infrastructure high ground will dominate the monetary order of Web3. And Peter Thiel has already placed his bets five years in advance.
This time, the power in the cryptocurrency world no longer belongs to anonymous geeks but to capital-savvy old foxes. Peter Thiel uses Bullish to grasp the flow entry, Paxos and Ubyx to lay out the clearing foundation, Erebor to open legal dollar channels, and CoinDesk to control discourse and information flow. Behind all this is the ultimate bet on "how to sustain dollar credit on-chain."
If blockchain technology once attempted to decentralize finance, then Peter Thiel is working to re-centralize crypto finance, but this time the center is not the Federal Reserve or JPMorgan, but in the hands of a venture capital empire.
Perhaps this is the true endgame of stablecoins: not stable assets, but stable power.
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