Billionaire Looks for “the Next-best Currency”, Gives Bitcoin Hope

Ray Dalio, American billionaire investor, Co-Chief Investment Officer and Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, a global investment firm, published a report, where he criticizes the current fiat money system but does not mention Bitcoin. This made a number of people ask as to why that is. However, his earlier comments show that Dalio did not write off cryptocurrency completely.

The viral report, with overwhelmingly positive comments, says that approximately every 10 years, due to unsustainable factors, a new paradigm begins, where the markets operate opposite of how they did in the previous one.

Dalio said that any single approach to investing will “experience a time when it performs so terribly that it can ruin you”, including cash, which is not risk-free and can be depreciated in value, as the central bank can print it.

Moreover, he added that “It is also a good time to ask what will be the next-best currency or storehold of wealth to have when most reserve currency central bankers want to devalue their currencies in a fiat currency system.”

“I think <…> that those [investments] that will most likely do best will be those that do well when the value of money is being depreciated and domestic and international conflicts are significant, such as gold,” Dalio said, while a major cryptocurrency investment company is encouraging to “drop gold“.

Not surprisingly, many in the cryptoverse shared this report showing it as another example why people need Bitcoin. Also, many asked Dalio about this most popular cryptocurrency.

The reason why Dalio did not mention digital assets may lie in his previously expressed skepticism towards cryptocurrencies.

First, in 2017, he said that he is enthusiastic about blockchain, though “its characteristics right now are standing in the way of its potential”. Also, he stated that currency has two purposes: a medium of exchange and a storehold of wealth, while Bitcoin is “right now” neither of those two things effectively. It can be spent in limited number of cases, “which can also be threatened in terms of what the secrecy of those transactions are and things that are being done by governments to get beyond that secrecy.” And though there is “a lot of merit to it”, as a currency “you can’t have the volatility driven by speculation on it make it a storehold of wealth.”

However, in more recent comments, the famous investor said that he hopes that cryptocurrencies will solve these issues.

“What I would hope is that it could be very effective as a medium of exchange – wow, that would be a great thing if they made that very effective quickly so you’re using it – and that you can create enough stability in that price so that the uncertainty of the price movement doesn’t stand as an impediment to its usage as a currency or as a storehold of wealth,” Dalio said in an interview this past April.

He also added that crypto is going through a speculative bubble, and that it’s “a speculative vehicle based on blockchain, which is a very impressive technology”, very similar to what the Internet was in 2000. He’s sold on blockchain, Dalio says, adding that there will also be digital tokens issued by central banks as well, but the question is “which cryptocurrency is going to be effective and what that will look like?” Bitcoin could end up being Blackberry (previously, an iconic smartphone brand), he says, with Ethereum replacing it, for example.