Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR), has quietly relocated his family to Buenos Aires, Argentina. According to a New York
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR), has quietly relocated his family to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
According to a New York Times report published May 28, Thiel, 58, has reportedly moved into a $12 million mansion in the Argentine capital, enrolling his children in a local school and exploring the country as a strategic escape hatch from the United States.
The move is being driven by two forces, which are taxes and ideology.
Related: Peter Thiel sells off full stake in crypto company
California is pushing a one-time 5% wealth tax on assets over $1 billion. This bill could cost Thiel $1.4 billion from his $28 billion fortune.
But beyond the tax bill, there's a deeper pull. Two unnamed insiders cited in the NYT piece say that Thiel's close friendship with Argentine President Javier Milei has resulted in an official offer of citizenship.
Thiel already holds passports from New Zealand, Germany, and the United States, and is reportedly in the process of acquiring a Maltese passport.
However, Thiel continues to keep more than 99% of his fortune rooted in the U.S., and the Buenos Aires mansion is his only known investment in Argentina to date.
TheStreet Roundtable reached out to the Thiel Foundation for comments and had not received a response at the time of publication.
The Thiel news landed with particular resonance in the crypto privacy space.
Will McEvoy, CIO at Cypherpunk Technologies and principal at Winklevoss Capital, one of the most vocal institutional backers of privacy coin Zcash, responded on X,
"The need for Zcash has never been greater."
Zcash (ZEC) is a decentralized digital currency that functions like Bitcoin (BTC), but with a critical difference, i.e., transactions are fully shielded, hiding the sender, receiver, and amount from outside observers.
Bitcoin trade as of May 29At press time, as per Decibel, Bitcoin was trading at $73,572 after dropping 0.2% in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Zcash was down over 3% in the past 24 hours, trading around $536.
Both Thiel and Milei are also staunch advocates of cryptocurrency.
Thiel has publicly advocated for Bitcoin as "digital gold," and his Founders Fund has backed crypto through $200 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) investments.
Milei entered office as arguably the most crypto-friendly head of state on Earth, openly praising Bitcoin as a way to "make money private again" and inheriting a country already among the world's top five for crypto adoption per capita.
However, his credibility took a hit after he promoted the $LIBRA token in February 2025, which surged to a $4.5 billion market cap before collapsing 96% and wiping out an estimated $251 million in investor funds.
Related: Peter Thiel-backed crypto stock crashes on shocking news
