The news will undoubtedly delight fans and enthusiasts of cryptocurrencies.
January's cryptocurrency market rout didn't prompt billionaire Ray Dalio to sell his bitcoins, despite his reservations about digital currencies.
The founder and co-chief investor of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund with about $150 billion in assets under management, confirmed, in a recent episode of Bloomberg's "The David Rubenstein Show", that he still "has a tiny percentage" of his portfolio in crypto.
"How do you foresee crypto impacting the world order?" host David Rubenstein asked Dalio.
"I think it's interesting," the billionaire responded. "I have a tiny percentage on it on my portfolio to diversify."
But he added that: "It's a very vulnerable incident because they can track who is operating on it. It can be tracked."
This is certainly not the first time that Dalio has said that he holds crypto, but it is important to note that he confirms this after difficult weeks for the new industry, which lost more than $1.2 trillion dollars between the beginning of November and at the end of January due to concerns about the end of a period of easy money in the United States.
In December, Dalio told Markewatch that he owns “a little bit” of bitcoin, calling it “almost a younger generation’s alternative to gold."
“Bitcoin is like gold, though gold is the well established blue-chip alternative to fiat money,” he said.
At the beginning of January, he insisted that it would be reasonable for each investor to allocate 1% to 2% of one's portfolio to bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency.
Without being a great bitcoin champion, Dalio is not against cryptocurrencies either. His position would rather be between the two. He's said that it's not "black and white." He recognizes the merits of bitcoin, for example, and does not hesitate to express reservations. That's what he did again on Thursday.
He complained, for example, about the attention and headlines paid to cryptocurrencies.
"In terms of its size, it has issues. I think too much attention has been spent on crypto," he lamented
He reiterated his previous warnings against over-regulation of the sector and a possible ban on bitcoin by governments.
"It will be outlawed, probably by different governments," he predicted, emphasizing that digital currencies are trackable and vulnerable and are likely to be banned by governments.
On the other hand, the billionaire, however, predicted that traditional currencies will face increasingly tough competition from cryptocurrencies. People will wonder more what they should use as a medium of exchange and store of wealth, according to Dalio.
Bridgewater clients include governments, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, charities and endowments.
After a black month of January, the crypto market is trying to rebound. Bitcoin is back above the symbolic bar of $40,000 but is still far from the historic record of $69,044.77 dollars reached on Nov. 10.
