Bridgewater Associates Chairman, Billionaire Ray Dalio, has publicly aired his opinion on Bitcoin over gold, saying he’s still bullish on BTC but has a strong penchant for gold.
In an August 04 interview with CNBC, the billionaire investor confirmed owning a “very small amount” of Bitcoin but maintained he would still go for gold if he had to choose between the two. He said:
“If you put a gun to my head, and you said, ‘I can only have one. I would choose gold.”
Dalio further explained that he sees Bitcoin as digital gold, which remains a significant way to diversify the digital investment world. He added:
“There are certain assets that you want to own to diversify the portfolio, and Bitcoin is something like a digital gold.”
The billionaire investor has been a long-term gold bull, with his Bridgewater hedge fund reportedly pouring more than $400 million into gold investments in the second quarter of 2021. Previously in 2019, he allegedly wrote on LinkedIn that adding gold can help balance an investment portfolio in risk-reducing and return-enhancing ways.
For now, he seems much attracted to gold, which he is convinced that it is more resilient and a natural hedge against inflation. Supportively, central banks are currently holding more than 35,000 metric tons, which equate to about a fifth of all gold ever mined.
Although Dalio remains passionate about crypto assets, he has expressed his concerns about cryptocurrency uncertainty on several occasions.
Dalio had previously issued a stern warning to investors about possible tightened regulation of crypto assets which have intensified so far. He also warned about a possible ban in the United States, just like it did to gold ownership in the late 1930s. Dalio felt that there would be a “reasonable chance” for the flagship cryptocurrency to be outlawed by the Federal Government.
In that context, he has remained cautious about Bitcoin but still insists that he wants it in his portfolio for diversification purposes:
“By and large, I don’t know whether Bitcoin is going to go up or down. I could argue both sides of that.”
Interestingly, the investor also said that he would prefer to purchase Bitcoin over government-backed bonds during an interview at the consensus crypto conference in May.
In a related report, another high-profile billionaire had lately appeared in public to air out his reflections about Bitcoin. In an interview with Bloomberg on August 2, an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Billionaire Marc Andreessen, said that Bitcoin was “one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen” and a “fundamental technological breakthrough.”
However, his comments revealed that he was more enthusiastic about the decentralized system that Bitcoin is laid on. In the same context, he asserted that “many of the smartest people in computer science are going into this field,” adding that it represented “a new kind of financial system” where people can form trust relationships in an untrusted environment.”
The precious yellow metal is exchanging hands at $1,812 per ounce, having lost 4.4% since the beginning of the year. On the other hand, the flagship crypto is oscillating above $40,000, having soared 35% over the same period at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap.
