Peter Thiel's Insight into the Future of Finance: From FinTech to Cryptocurrency

A new era in the world of financial technology is drawing to a close. By mid-2025, Valar Ventures, led by Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, sold its 4.8 million shares of Wise. The transaction was worth approximately 50 million pounds. But this was not merely a profit-taking move; it symbolized the end of the previous generation’s financial innovation model. Why did Thiel make this decision? Behind it lay a deep reflection on how to fundamentally transform the financial system itself.

The End of the FinTech Golden Age and the Significance of Wise’s Exit

In 2013, Thiel set his sights on a small office in East London. The startup was called TransferWise, a fledgling company at the time. It tackled a simple challenge: making cross-border remittances cheaper and faster, with an innovative approach. Without obtaining a banking license, it used a currency matching mechanism that allowed funds to flow “across borders without crossing borders.”

Thiel has always favored the unconventional. He prefers to invest in systems free from government and regulatory constraints, focusing on improvements that enhance individual efficiency. TransferWise perfectly aligned with this ideal. It avoided reliance on permits, bypassed intermediaries, and determined exchange rates through direct matching between users. Its product logic was self-contained, and its growth trajectory was clear.

Thiel’s often-cited “from zero to one” model can also be seen here. It occupied small niches within existing systems, built mini-monopolies through efficiency advantages, and expanded logically within that scope. TransferWise’s currency matching feature exemplified a system-level perspective.

The company’s growth was dramatic. By 2017, its monthly settlement volume exceeded 1 billion pounds. By 2020, its annual transaction volume reached 67 billion pounds, with a valuation of 5 billion dollars. In 2021, it rebranded as Wise and directly listed on the London Stock Exchange, with a valuation soaring to 11 billion dollars. As an early investor, Valar Ventures became one of the biggest beneficiaries of the IPO.

However, in 2025, this story reached a turning point. The entire FinTech industry’s fundraising momentum cooled. According to Crunchbase, global FinTech funding deals dropped to 1,805, a decline of over 30% year-over-year. The situation was even more severe in retail FinTech, with first-quarter 2025 lending down 37.8% compared to the previous quarter.

The reasons why FinTech once succeeded were rooted in finding optimization points at the periphery of the banking system—through APIs, fee structures, and user experience—replacing parts of banking functions. But now, all easily optimizable areas have been overhauled, leaving only increased compliance burdens, higher customer acquisition costs, and shrinking growth opportunities.

Wise exemplifies this shift. Its stock price has fallen over 20% from its 2024 peak. It faced a $9 million fine from FinCEN, the U.S. financial crime enforcement network. UK regulators also launched a review. The lightweight compliance model it once boasted is being crushed under real-world pressures. And a more fundamental threat has emerged: the new settlement pathways enabled by stablecoins.

The Limits of Old Financial Innovation and the Shift Toward System Rebuilding

Payment systems in the crypto era are beginning to erode existing models. On-chain settlement of stablecoins enables real-time clearing and settlement. Without banks as intermediaries, global transfers can be completed in minutes. Intermediary-based solutions like Wise are losing their relevance.

A fundamental change is underway. The previous generation of FinTech focused on the presentation layer—account systems, payment routes, UI design—simply overlaying a more user-friendly shell on the existing financial system. They improved convenience but did not replace the core banking infrastructure.

In contrast, the new generation of crypto protocols directly target the protocol and settlement layers. They build autonomous system components independent of banks—creating independent settlement pathways and identity verification systems. Areas once peripheral to the financial system are now becoming the core of parallel financial infrastructures.

As value shifts from being primarily in front-end interfaces to underlying structural layers, investors’ attention naturally turns downward—toward the foundational systems that could fundamentally disrupt order. Thiel has identified this space.

Thiel’s Famous Quotes and the Evolution of His Investment Philosophy

Thiel once famously said, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” This criticizes how past “innovations” were merely optimized advertising and extended user engagement, without truly advancing toward a meaningful future.

Unwilling to settle for incremental improvements within existing systems, Thiel seeks to rewrite the fundamental logic of the system itself. From energy, healthcare, space exploration, to today’s crypto, the projects he invests in may seem unconventional. But all steps aim toward a qualitatively different future—the “flying car” world.

A decade ago, Thiel’s investment in Wise demonstrated the potential to improve efficiency within the gaps of the traditional financial system. But today’s crypto investments are driven by a fundamentally different intent: rebuilding the financial system from the ground up.

Thiel’s umbrella includes not only Valar Ventures but also the more strategic Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley VC that was among the first to invest in SpaceX and Meta. In late 2023, Founders Fund invested a total of 200 million dollars in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Having previously realized about 1.8 billion dollars in profit before the 2022 market peak, the fund is now re-engaging.

Their subsequent strategy is deliberate. They are building a hidden financial infrastructure—controlling asset anchors, settlement pathways, and information flow—through investments in platforms like Bullish (trading), Paxos (stablecoin issuance), Ubyx (settlement protocols), Erebor (on-chain banking), and CoinDesk (media). This forms a “shadow central bank” in the crypto era.

Thiel’s goal is not to create a single platform company but to establish a new financial system that can operate independently of traditional banks—maintaining trust, liquidity, and regulatory order on its own.

From optimizing gaps to rebuilding the foundation—marking the end of old assumptions and the beginning of a new order. Thiel is stepping away from Wise and moving toward a distant future. As his words suggest, toward the world of “flying cars” that humanity truly desires.