(Kitco News,Wed. Sep. .15th, 2021) – If bitcoin becomes mainstream, regulators will kill it, said Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.
“I think at the end of the day, if it’s really successful, they will kill it, and they will try to kill it. And I think they will kill it because they have ways of killing it,” Dalio told CNBC on the sidelines of the SALT conference in New York on Wednesday.
Dalio’s comments come a day after Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler told U.S. lawmakers that there aregaps in the crypto regulation oversight.
In the testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Gensler highlighted the SEC’s goal of protecting investors and pointed to new challenges arising from new technologies and predictive data analytics tools.
The crypto space continues to exist outside of the regulatory framework, which increases the risk to investors, Gensler said during his testimony.
“Currently, we just don’t have enough investor protection in crypto finance, issuance, trading, or lending,” Gensler said on Tuesday. “Frankly, at this time, it’s more like the Wild West or the old world of ‘buyer beware’ that existed before the securities laws were enacted. This asset class is rife with fraud, scams, and abuse in certain applications. We can do better.”
In terms of regulatory gaps, Gensler said there is a “great deal of clarity” around what is a security, but there are gaps when it comes to coordinating with banking agencies on stable coins and coordinating with other agencies, including the CFTC, when it comes to tokens and trading platforms regulation.
Dalio believes that bitcoin is a good alternative to cash, but he does own more gold than bitcoin.
“There are so many things in a historical perspective that didn’t have intrinsic value and had perceived value. And then it went hot and it became cold. It could be either way. You just have to know what it is. It could be tulips in Holland,” he said. “I think it’s worth considering all the alternatives to cash and all the alternatives to the other financial assets. Bitcoin is a possibility. I have a certain amount of money in bitcoin.”
After very briefly falling below $30,000 in July, bitcoin seemed to have found its floor above that level and was last trading at $48,265,
Posted by:
Jack Dempsey, President
401 Gold Consultants LLC
jdemp2003@gmail.com