In the past, Ray Dalio – a billionaire investor that started the world’s largest hedge fund – has stated that the governments of the world could potentially try to ban or take one’s bitcoin units if the asset was to be successful enough.
Ray Dalio Warns Crypto Fans of Possible Government Action
Now, his warning has become even more dire, with Dalio saying that governments everywhere could potentially just try to “kill” bitcoin if it goes much further. He commented that the world’s number one digital asset by market cap could wind up being completely shut down by regulators who are looking to ensure banks stay in control and people’s financial futures remain in their hands.
While speaking at the SALT conference in New York, Dalio explained to an audience of listening crypto fans:
I think at the end of the day if it’s really successful, they will kill it and they will try to kill it, and I think they will kill it because they have ways of killing it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place. A value and so on.
Banks and governments everywhere are allegedly afraid of bitcoin because it does something that standard financial institutions were never designed to do, and that is to offer monetary freedom to the people of the world. With banks in power, access is potentially limited to services and products for many people that would be necessary to survive each day, and individuals do not have as much say in how far their money goes.
However, bitcoin does not care what your background is. It doesn’t care about your employment history or where you are situated. Rather, if you have access to the internet, anyone from anywhere can potentially open a digital wallet and start trading. Bitcoin makes finance easy, and banks are not crazy about this.
It’s a Good Diversification Tool
Dalio says that he is not an expert on bitcoin. In fact, he has often claimed he prefers gold in the long run, though he has sought bitcoin as a means of keeping his portfolio diversified, and over time, he has become more bullish on BTC, claiming:
I’m no expert on it … I think diversification matters. Bitcoin has some merit. The real question is how much [do you] have in gold versus how much you have in bitcoin. I think it’s worth considering all the alternatives to cash and all the alternatives to the other financial assets. Bitcoin is a possibility. It’s an amazing accomplishment to have brought it from where that programming occurred to where it is through the test of time.
Despite these thoughts, he was quick to warn his audience that everything could go south in a short period, warning that bitcoin could be “tulips in Holland” if people were not careful.