Venture capitalist and early Facebook Peter Thiel is betting on bitcoin for its size, and the possibility it becomes a gold-like safe haven.

"I would be long bitcoin, and neutral to skeptical of just about everything else at this point with a few possible exceptions," Thiel said during a conversation Thursday at the Economic Club of New York. "There will be one online equivalent to gold, and the one you'd bet on would be the biggest."

The PayPal co-founder backed the idea of bitcoin becoming a store of value instead of a go-to currency for daily transactions.

"I'm not talking about a new payments system," Thiel said, adding that bitcoin is too cumbersome for that use case. "It's like bars of gold in a vault that never move, and it's a sort of hedge of sorts against the whole world going falling apart."

Thiel scored a 50 to 80 percent chance that bitcoin ends up being worthless, and said there's a 20 to 50 percent chance it ends up moving higher.