I get that Ray Dalio has his own views. He mentioned that bitcoin transactions are transparent and public, which governments don't like, and that’s why central banks steer clear of it. He shared a few more thoughts, but you can check them out on X or in his quote.
So, with all this talk from Dalio, it seems like he just holds some bitcoin to mislead people, really. Bitcoin has proven itself to be a safe haven, especially if you’re not spending it. It's not linked to stocks, but some folks are just kidding themselves about that. They’ll realize the truth eventually. We’ve seen gold also dip alongside stocks at times, so if we’re going to say bitcoin is following stocks, that’s a bit of a stretch. When bitcoin eventually outperforms stocks in the next decade or so, maybe he’ll get it. He claims the bitcoin market is small, but is a $1.6 trillion market really that small? If banks start buying in, the market cap will just keep rising. Didn’t he think gold wasn’t at such high prices before? You can always spot critics, I guess.
There are so much inconsistencies in the post to the point it's not even a valid fud to be rebuffed or shared.
Throwing in "potentially controlled" had no basis and if that was the case banks will be lining up even more to hold it cause they want control. Bitcoin also doesn't 'lack' privacy it is transparent which is a positive feature
"Third, its a relatively small and controllable market, whereas gold stands alone. There is only one gold."
This line doesn't even make any sense.
Fuds like this could have been important in 2014, not today
Dalio has been predicting all kinds of financial catastrophes for many years and hasn't been correct even once.
To me he's just another engagement baiter like Peter Schiff.
Are we still listening to Twitter peeps for information about what market movements are going to happen and what the future holds of bitcoin?
I for one have never done so have in return got something that quite a few of you have been lacking - inner peace, knowing that my bitcoin babies are growing in fiat value over time and one day we are going to be rich as I continue to buy low and sell high to multiply my stack of bitcoin.
IT stocks are worth buying as well and so is gold, but that does not mean bitcoin should not be bought, it should be, but at the proper time and price.
You don't need it, neither do I, but there are other people who fall in love with influencers on social media as well as posts, tweets on such platforms. They can be newbies or senior participants in the market but they have something in common that is really good for market makers doing their manipulations through news, FUDs.
These people don't focus on fundamentals, lazy to learn about fundamentals which are helpful for their journeys. Rather than learning, they simply are depended on opinions of influencers and they will join, stay outside or exit the market based on posts, tweets from influencers.
Central banks don't "touch" bitcoins now but they might change in the future if governments globally change.
We have to be careful about what we hear other say regarding Bitcoin, because we don't even know what some are up to, this is where we shouldn't take everything that has been set as an attack so serious because those that are even accusing Bitcoin of one thing audio might have been secret investors unknowingly to us, we only see everybody on the spear of digital platforms and don't know what they are up to from within, this is where we have to only follow the genuine intention of why it was being created and ensure that this same reason is what we found to make our investment in it than relying on what others are saying.
At least he's coming up with different ways to echo the same set of bullshit that people have been saying about Bitcoin. I'll give him points for that.
I think sometimes, they forget that Bitcoin has achieved wat it has achieved in under 20 years, or they purposely ignore that fact.
Saying investors sell Bitcoin to cover their losses in stock another bullshit because investors generally seek money from differnt asset to cover their loss. So if Bitcoin is that asset that is always there to bail out tech investors, is that really such a bad thing?
Funny, he said "lack of privacy" is the reason central banks won't touch it, while that is one of the reasons why central banks and other regulatory bodies allow it at all in the first place. We've seen what regulatory bodies did to privacy coins like Monero. They don't even list them on any exchange. Bitcoin wouldn't have been this big if its transactions were private. It would have been banned in a lot of countries.
Let's comment / refute all of his statements one by one:
There is CoinJoin, there is Lightning, there are measures to fake transactions. Central Banks have a lot of expertise, they can hide the transactions they do. There are several entities where Arkham and friends weren't really able to identify their holdings.
This is a problem of the current investor structure (since around 2020 we see this correlation). Investor structure can change, and that's what would happen when a shift to "safe haven" thought would take place.
If Bitcoin manages to hold the 60,000$ low, then a big step towards a more reliable asset would already have been done: from around 80% crashes to around 50% bear markets. 50% is also the value gold holders have to expect in their bears (like 1980-2000 and 2011-2015 approx.). That would surely also be honored by investors, be it retailers (who would be less scared) or institutionals.
Small and controllable is perhaps currently still correct. The gold market is much bigger. But while "there is one gold" is correct in the present, such a statement often implies that there would be also only one gold in the future. We can't be sure about that, it is purely speculative. Bitcoin at least has the potential to really rival gold due to its controlled supply.
One response I think makes sense is that Ray Dalio is anti-bitcoin, as is the Chinese government's stance. hahaa
https://x.com/i/status/2054178077932920924
This closely correlates with his statement:
When guys get squeezed in a financial sector (in this case, investment), they will suddenly become a hater of something just to claim they are still better off.
I'd argue actual Gold market could be smaller than Bitcoin's.
The vast majority of Gold's trading volume and liquidity is "paper" Gold, derivatives and futures. It's a bit of a hustle to trade physical Gold or redeem the purchased "paper" Gold for physical Gold.
It is not with Bitcoin.
Of course a lot of Bitcoin's trading volume comes from futures as well, but due to its digital nature it is very easy to trade actual Bitcoin as well and the important part is that unlike with Gold, the complexity of buying or selling Bitcoin doesn't drastically increase with the amount you buy or sell.
I don't think he means privacy as in transacting. I think he simply means privacy as in secrecy of total holdings and where those holdings are. There's a point there, because coinjoin cannot really hide an entity that owns 1 million bitcoin, let alone lightning or second layers. As for Arkham, the amount of bitcoin that a central bank can buy is nowhere near the amounts those small entities have bought. It's more in the range of Strategy's holdings, which Arkham has traced on-chain.
Central Banks, or any other organization, could provide the service to coinjoin banks bitcoin holdings. Wasabi Wallet can do that and the coordinator code and binary are already available for whoever is willing to run an instance.
On a theoretical note, I think that Bitcoin has a smaller market cap and is still in a price discovery phase as opposed to gold that has been used for thousands of years to hedge against inflation.
If countries could get to adopt it, own a reserve for it like CBN, and allow institutional adoption for Bitcoin to flourish, then the current market cap would increase to close the gap with gold.
The bottom line is that, should Bitcoin perform better to be a good preference for investors just as gold is now, the world is simply becoming a more decentralized and verifiable system with recent development and innovation in technology and with Bitcoin as the number one crypto currency.
Marketcap is irrelevant here. We are talking about the size of the actual market. Not ''paper'' assets or IOUs, not derivatives or futures. The amount of the assets that is immediately available for purchase and the amount that services/peers are willing to buy.
Bitcoin edges here due to the perks of its digital nature.
We live in such a sensationalist world that anyone is capable of saying anything to get a minute of internet fame. What I believe is that the traditional banking system wouldn't have a problem using Bitcoin; its only impediment is governments, since their laws aren't clear enough at present, and this could entail monetary risks for banks. A bank will never make an investment where the risk is uncertain. Today a president might support Bitcoin, and the next one might exclude it completely, and a bank can't afford that uncertainty. Under current international rules, the business isn't profitable.
The problem is that Wasabi Wallet requires the private keys to be exposed to the computer running it. You cannot coinjoin using Wasabi with cold storage funds, and holders like Strategy or central banks must practice the highest levels of security, such as multi-sig and airgapped signing devices.
Since central banks generally report their assets, I cannot find one good reason for practicing privacy techniques for their bitcoin holdings... unless they want to lie for the assets they own.
I sincerely do not understand what Dalio said above. Some of his statements honestly do not make sense and I wonder why he said so.
What does he mean by bitcoin having high correlation with tech stocks. Do people sell bitcoin to buy stocks or the reverse is the case. Bitcoin has proven that long term players benefit more from it, so people even sell stocks to buy bitcoin if necessary.
What does he mean by bitcoin being relatively small? Is he talking about the fixed supply of 21 million? If yes, that is even an advantage and not a flaw. What does he mean by bitcoin being controllable? I coin with cap in trillion?
Good plays central role in the global system and bitcoin lacks privacy might be the only true statements of his.
Or. He will be like Schiff and never understand.
Anyway. What stops Central Banks from creating their own Second Layer on top of Bitcoin particularly to avoid the Transparency they dislike?
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I am assuming Dalio is referring to the fact that banks are usually evil and do not want their transfers to be monitored and questioned by the public eye.
Creating a second layer on Bitcoin could be tricky. Technically, its feasible but might not address all their concerns. For instance, theyd still need to deal with transaction monitoring and regulation issues. Also, building such infrastructure would require significant resources and expertise. Privacy is just one aspect, transparency in asset reporting is another major hurdle
Trezor can sign Wasabi coinjoin transactions. Also, banks don't want to let everybody (other competitor banks included) what they do with the money. They could be okay reporting how much the have but that's something completely different.