We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again… You just can’t please everybody, and when it comes to crypto and bitcoin, this applies double. Another gazillionaire – Ray Dalio – is trashing the world’s leading digital currency by market cap and claims that there are serious problems with investment strategies that revolve around it.
Ray Dalio: BTC Isn’t What You Think It Is
Dalio is a billionaire and the founder of Bridgewater Associates. In a recent interview, he tells his listeners that bitcoin is not the solution they’re looking for. Everybody is seeking a “safe haven” in times of economic turmoil, but he assures his listeners that bitcoin isn’t it. Rather, they should turn their attention to precious metals like gold.
Dalio – spewing out the typical gloom-and-doom one often hears from financial conglomerates these days – believes that the global economy is nearing another serious downfall. He claims:
We’re in a spot in monetary policy where you can no longer stimulate the same way you did before. The way it works is they print money, they buy a bond, they give it to the seller of the bond, and they buy other financial assets.
He also believes that this economic fallout could occur during the U.S.’s upcoming presidential term, and that many are losing their faith in government bonds. He explains:
When you get negative-yielding bonds or something, you’re approaching a limit. We are approaching a limit that will be a paradigm shift, I think… It’s going to happen. You can’t jump into cash. Cash is trash… because they’re going to print money.
Facing a future such as the one that Dalio paints would be problematic for most people, whether they’re serious investors or not. In times like that, people need to ensure that they have the reserves necessary to keep their homesteads stable, but Dalio is convinced that bitcoin is not the answer.
One of the problems the billionaire investor sees with the digital currency is that it’s not utilized the way gold is by governments. Typically, government wealth is accumulated and stored in gold bullion, not bitcoin, and considering it’s not a mainstream asset at the time of writing, Dalio doesn’t believe bitcoin can serve any real purpose in times of economic trouble.
Bitcoin Doesn’t Keep Governments Afloat
He states:
There are two purposes of money: a medium of exchange and a store-hold of wealth, and bitcoin is not effective in either of those cases, now… Who is going to do the buying? Central bankers and others. What are they going to hold as reserves? What has been tried and true? Are they going to hold digital bitcoin? They’re going to hold gold. That is a reserve currency, and it’s been a reserve currency for a thousand years.
Other billionaires who have expressed negative ideas towards bitcoin include Warren Buffett and President Donald Trump.