Ray Dalio – a billionaire and the founder of Bridgewater Associates – has never been a big bitcoin fan. He doesn’t seem to care for it, and he also doesn’t really seem to understand it.
Ray Dalio Isn’t Quite Feeling It When It Comes to BTC
Per his latest interview, it becomes apparent that this hasn’t changed, as he’s still refusing to see the light on the growing cryptocurrency industry and its commander-in-chief BTC.
In his interview, Dalio specifically touted gold and said that he didn’t understand “why people are more inclined to go to bitcoin than gold.” As a gold fanatic, he’s often touting its stability and history, and while he holds bitcoin at press time, he only has a little to his name.
He fully admits that he doesn’t feel the same passion that so many others feel, and he isn’t willing to bet his life or his portfolio on the asset’s growth factors. Citing the problems of the crypto industry, he said:
Cryptocurrency or bitcoin doesn’t move in a reliable way related to almost anything. It, you know, moves up and down because of this move and that move… and unlike gold, let’s say.
He went on to claim that gold cannot be beaten in terms of its strength. He mentioned:
Gold is [a] well established blue-chip alternative to fiat money.
He then continued with his anti-bitcoin and crypto rant, commenting:
Crypto, it’s very easy to track the owners and transactions. It’s not, like, by the government… It doesn’t move in a way that’s consistent with any environments. It’s a small asset class. We talk a lot more about it, but its size is about, you know, 30 percent of the size of Microsoft, and Microsoft is one stock among many stocks.
While he acknowledged that bitcoin has had solid bull runs in the past (and it’s enduring one right now at the time of writing), he feels the currency is too volatile and speculative to be taken seriously. He says the results surrounding bitcoin are very up and down, and thus he hasn’t fully transitioned into a position of trust when it comes to the world’s leading digital asset. Dalio said:
I’ve seen people get very rich, and I’ve seen people [go] very broke with it.
It Can’t Stay Still
Unfortunately, it appears he has a point with those last statements given the price of bitcoin has been very north and south over the past 18 months or so. The currency rose to a new all-time high of about $68,000 per unit in November of 2021, and in many ways, it appeared unstoppable.
However, 2022 saw the worst crypto winter in history, with bitcoin losing more than 70 percent of its value and dipping into the mid-$16K range by the time the year was over.
