At Monetarium, our Dialogs series brings together influential thinkers to explore pressing monetary challenges. In July 2025, we hosted PayPal co-founder and Palantir chairman Peter Thiel for an intimate Washington D.C. discussion on “The Debt, the Dollar, and Our Options From Here” with 50 subject matter experts, including Confusion Capital’s Lead Macroeconomics Research Economist, Dr. Gina Pieters.

In this exchange, Dr. Pieters raises a provocative question: could the dollar maintain reserve currency status through its role as a “global unit of account” even after America loses military superpower status? She suggests this financial dominance could allow U.S. debt to continue in a “weird zombie way” because countries would still need dollars to price goods globally. This disentanglement of financial power from military power represents a “new aspect in this world.”

Thiel responds by focusing on the concrete example of oil pricing in dollars — the petrodollar system. Is this “just a unit of account” where Saudi Arabia could theoretically convert dollars immediately after each sale, or is it “unbelievably profound geopolitically”? He points to the stark example of Saddam Hussein, who switched to pricing Iraqi oil in Euros about a year before the U.S. invasion. The message was clear: the U.S. Dollar and the U.S. military are connected at a foundational level. While Thiel admits uncertainty about separating these dimensions, his intuition leans toward the dollar’s dominance being “linked to all these weird forms of American exceptionalism rather than just a silly accounting convention.”

Monetarium Dialogs is an ongoing series that furthers Reserve’s mission to combat inflation by providing access to better financial products and fostering critical conversations about the future of money. Through intimate gatherings with leading thinkers, we explore the monetary challenges and opportunities that will shape tomorrow’s financial landscape.

This meeting was conducted under Chatham House Rules, and this clip was published with the permission of those quoted in order to provide a small window into the nature of the dialog.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EheFyt5EtEs

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