The value proposition of Bitcoin has long been questioned by its cynics.
Unlike traditional assets, the cryptocurrency doesn’t generate cash flow, pay out dividends, produce a fixed yield, or have a maturity date. And unlike recognized forms of money, Bitcoin isn’t backed by the power of a government or some asset, like gold.
But, Bitcoin’s underlying value may be accentuated in the coming years. You see, some of the world’s most powerful investors and analysts have begun to fear the worst the economy.
While they aren’t urging common Joes and Jills to buy cryptocurrency, what they are saying is likely to only help the budding potential form of money.
Finance to See “Paradigm Shift”
“Paradigm shift” is a phrase often used by Bitcoin proponents who claim that fiat money is on its way out.
But, funny enough, one of the world’s most legendary investors — Bridgewater Associates’s Ray Dalio — used those two words to describe a shift in central banking policy and global finance.
Speaking to CNBC in an interview, Dalio stated that the current economic landscape is starting to look more and more like it did prior to the Great Depression of the 20s and the 30s.
He wrote in a LinkedIn post that the world’s propensity to take on debt and the failure by central banks to maintain the economy is worrying him.
In the interview, Dalio bashed quantitative easing and low — even negative — interest rates, which have become a way for central banks to prop up asset markets across the globe, as made apparent by the stock market’s decade-long surge. This is something that members of the Bitcoin community often cite as a way to bash fiat money.
These low rates and the incessant use of open market operations, according to the billionaire, isn’t good:
“These forces are creating the need for extremely loose monetary policies that are forcing central banks to drive interest rates to such low levels and will lead to enormous deficits that are monetized, which is creating the blow-off in bonds that is the reciprocal of the 1980-82 blow-off in gold.”
Bullish for Bitcoin
It is important to point out that Dalio isn’t a fan of Bitcoin.
However, this “paradigm shift” that he speaks of is likely to only benefit the cryptocurrency.
Case in point, in one of his previous LinkedIn posts, Dalio mentioned that gold should be added to the portfolio of investors, writing that it may be “risk-reducing and return-enhancing” for investors to add the precious metal to their portfolio, adding that securities and bonds could face diminishing returns.
Naturally, many in the cryptocurrency community have extended Dalio’s recommendation to Bitcoin. You see, the inflationary policies currently being enlisted are, according to former Wall Streeter Travis Kling, “brazenly bullish for a non-sovereign, hardcapped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value.” And by that, he obviously means Bitcoin.
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