It’s always refreshing to see someone who wasn’t a bitcoin believer change his mind. Today, the cryptocurrency seems to have added another “fan” to its roster. That person is Ray Dalio, billionaire and co-founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.
Ray Dalio Now Sees Bitcoin Through New Lens
In the past, bitcoin has often attracted criticism and scrutiny for its openness to price change and its volatile behavior. While it is easy to become rich overnight with the help of cryptocurrency, it is also possible to lose everything, as we saw towards the end of 2018, a period when bitcoin lost around 70 percent of its value over 11 months.
However, this year seems to be quite different from bitcoin in that people no longer consider it a speculative asset. Instead, it has gained a reputation as the “newest safe haven in the world”. Now considered a tool for mining someone’s wealth and keeping money safe in times of economic strife, Dalio seems to get the picture despite criticizing the world’s number one digital currency by cap market a month earlier.
On Twitter, Dalio offered the following:
I can’t imagine central banks, large institutional investors, businesses or multinationals using it. If I am wrong about these things, I would love to be corrected.
Well, better late than never as they always say, right?
In a recent interview, Dalio compares the asset favorably with gold, claiming it has some of the same characteristics. It states:
I believe that bitcoin and some other digital currencies over the past ten years have established themselves as interesting alternatives such as gold assets, with similarities and differences to gold and other mobile, restricted-supply (as opposed to real estate) alternatives.
Dalio later posted this same explanation to the Reddit social media platform following a “Ask Me Anything” session. He further stated:
Like [for] bitcoin compared to gold, I prefer to capture those things that central banks will want to hold and exchange value in when they try to negotiate.
From Hater to Believer?
Dalio is famous for referring to bitcoin as a “bubble” in the year 2017, and for many, the following months would eventually prove Dalio right, only this time, things are very different . Currency rally seems to be driven by institutional players rather than retailers, and so bitcoin maintains a certain momentum that it did not have three years ago.
For example, bitcoin scared everyone when it fell into the $ 17,900 range, more than $ 1,000 less than where it stood a week or two ago. Now, the currency has risen back to $ 18,800 at the time of writing, reassuring everyone that bitcoin is not planning to traverse the doldrums this holiday season.