Dalio believes that gold is a good inflation hedge, but he also has some Bitcoin in his portfolio.
Ray Dalio Hedge fund manager says he’s still bullish on Bitcoin, but he has a stronger preference for gold than the cryptocurrency.
Speaking to CNBC on August 4, the billionaire investor admitted to owning a “very small amount” of Bitcoin, but stated that if forced to choose between gold and bitcoin, he would choose gold.
“If you put a gun to my head, and you said, ‘I can only have one. I would choose gold.”
He went on to say that he sees Bitcoin as digital gold and that it continues to be a valuable way to diversify investments. According to him, “There are certain assets that you want to own to diversify the portfolio, and Bitcoin is something like a digital gold,”
Dalio has been a long-term bull on gold, with his Bridgewater hedge fund investing more than $400 million in the precious metal in the second quarter of 2017.
In 2019, he stated that adding gold to a portfolio can help to maintain a healthy balance because it is both risk-reducing and return-enhancing.
Dalio finds it appealing because of its store of value properties, which he considers to be a natural hedge against inflation. Central banks currently hold more than 35,000 metric tons of gold, which is approximately a fifth of the total amount of gold ever mined in the world.
Dalio has previously expressed concerns about possible regulation of crypto assets, as well as a potential ban in the United States, similar to what happened with gold ownership in the 1930s. According to Dalio, there is a “reasonable chance” that Bitcoin will be outlawed by the federal government in the future.
His attitude toward Bitcoin remains cautious, but he still wants to include it in his portfolio for diversification reasons, explaining that he “doesn’t really know whether Bitcoin is going to rise or fall.” I could make a case for both sides of that.”
During an interview at the Consensus crypto conference in May, he stated that he would prefer to purchase bitcoins over bonds.
At the time of writing, gold is trading at $1,810 per ounce, representing a 4.4 percent decline since the start of the year. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has increased by 36 percent over the same period, and currently trades at $39,360, according to CoinGecko.
Marc Andreessen, the founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has recently expressed his thoughts on Bitcoin. On Tuesday, the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz stated that Bitcoin was “one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen” and that it represented a “fundamental technological breakthrough.”
However, according to the report, he was more enthusiastic about the decentralized system on which it is based. He said “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 are “able to form trust relationships in an untrusted environment.”
