The co-founder and manager of the money management firm Citadel has voiced his grievances with Bitcoin. Ken Griffin stated today that none of his portfolio managers are interested in exposure to digital assets.
Ken Griffin: “I Still Scratch My Head About Bitcoin”
It’s very rare here at NewsBTC that we get to report on a prominent figure from traditional finance proclaiming their love of Bitcoin. Today is no exception.
Ken Griffin of Citadel spoke at the eighth annual Delivering Alpha Conference held in New York earlier today. CNBC reported:
“I don’t have a single portfolio manager [of mine] who has told me we should buy crypto, not a single portfolio manager.”
Griffin went on to state that there was simply no need for Bitcoin because you can’t pay your taxes with it. Evidently, the billionaire hedge fund manager doesn’t fully understand the permissionless, unconfiscatable nature of blockchain-based digital assets. In his words:
“What people don’t understand with cryptocurrencies versus the U.S. dollar – you have to have the U.S. dollar to pay your taxes at the end of the year. You don’t have a choice. There’s no need for cryptocurrencies. They’re a solution in search of [a] problem from my perspective.”
As a professional money manager, it’s hardly surprising that Griffin entirely misses the problem that cryptocurrencies solved. He sounds like he doesn’t understand the necessity of having an asset that is out of the control of national governments and unaffected by the risk-taking whims of individuals much like himself. After all, Bitcoin was a direct response to the global recession of 2008 that was created by reckless speculation.
When the likes of Griffin, Jamie Dimon, and Warren Buffet attack Bitcoin publicly, you have to wonder what their motive is. Are they really blind to why the planet has collectively decided to store over $127 billion in an asset class that is out of the control of such banking elites?
Or, are they trying to cling on to their privileged current positions by discouraging people from getting involved in cryptocurrency? A final interpretation could be that such public statements allow themselves and their clients to quietly accumulate crypto assets before going public about their holdings in expectation of a price spike.
At the Delivering Alpha Conference, Griffin went on to state that he wasn’t keen on offering clients exposure to crypto, even if they requested it:
“I have a hard time finding myself wanting to be in a position of being a liquidity provider for a product I don’t believe in.”
Griffin’s words are similar to those of the BlackRock CEO earlier this week. Larry Fink claimed just yesterday:
“No. I don’t think that any client has sought out crypto exposure… I’ve not heard from one client who says, ‘I need to be in this.'”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
