The sharp change in Dalio’s position will come as music to the ears of cryptocurrency investors who have been battered by an intense meltdown in the asset class over the past week. The value of Bitcoin alone has crashed over 50 per cent from its record high although the cryptocurrency staged some comeback on Monday as it rose as much as 15 per cent.
At 08:27 pm, Bitcoin was trading 10.7 per cent higher at $37,711 on cryptocurrency exchange WazirX.
“I have some Bitcoin,” Dalio said in an interview at CoinBase’s Consensus 2021 event.
Dalio said that in an inflationary scenario, he would rather have “Bitcoins than bonds” as he echoed the argument some institutional investors have made recently in the cryptocurrency’s favour, i.e., Bitcoin could replace gold as a better hedge against runaway inflation that may happen in the West in the coming years.
The owner of the largest hedge fund in the world Bridgewater Associates, which manages assets worth over $100 billion, has recently warmed up to Bitcoin after being against it as soon as November.
“It seems to me that Bitcoin has succeeded in crossing the line from being a highly speculative idea that could well not be around in the short order to probably being around and probably having some value in the future,” the hedge fund manager had said in January.
However, Dalio reiterated that the cryptocurrencies will face existential threat from regulators and central banks.
