Thiel touts the No. 1 cryptocurrency for its size and its ability to compete with gold as a safe haven, saying at the Economic Club of New York:
I would be long bitcoin, and neutral to skeptical of just about everything else at this point with a few possible exceptions. There will be one online equivalent to gold, and the one youd bet on would be the biggest, said Thiel.
Terming it as 'digital gold' could be a bit of an understatement for Bitcoin as it has outgrown the likes of gold and diamond by a huge margin. We knew about the existence of gold from centuries, dating back to the BC era and yet it has shown barely any significant growth compared to Bitcoin which has grown in a huge fashion just under a decade.
Bitcoin controls more than 40% of cryptocurrency market cap compared to almost one-fifth for Ethereum, as per Coin Market Cap data cited in CNBC.
Being the first of its kind, it definitely deserves to be there as the number one until something better comes up and takes over, which is highly unlikely. Ethereum has a long way to go as far as overthrowing Bitcoin as the #1 crypto is concerned.