Legendary investor Ray Dalio still only holds 1% of his portfolio in Bitcoin — and prefers gold instead.
Speaking on a Thursday episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast, the Bridgewater Associates founder explained that while there are different types of money, and Bitcoin was one of them, gold was a better investment.
Dalio has gone from saying he wouldn’t invest in Bitcoin over the years to finally admitting it was in his portfolio.
“[Bitcoin] is a type of money that can’t be printed, but there are technologies that can hurt it — in other words, if there’s quantum computing,” he said.
“And it can be monitored by governments and so on, and it could be taxed. And digital currencies are somewhat similar.”
Dalio added that Bitcoin only makes up 1% of his portfolio. “I prefer that — I’m pointing to the gold bars here — rather than the Bitcoin,” he added on the show.
Last year, Dalio also admitted that Bitcoin only made up 1% of his investments.
This isn’t the first time Dalio has criticized Bitcoin and praised gold: Back in 2020, the billionaire investor said that the cryptocurrency was too volatile to use as money but said everyone should have some gold in their portfolio.
Dalio continued that governments could crack down on Bitcoin. “When the governments say I don’t want it, they have the power, therefore, to do whatever they want with it, and central banks will not own any significant amount of that because of the reason I said: they want their transactions to be private and in their control.”
While Dalio still takes a cautious approach to Bitcoin buying, over the years, the asset has become more widely accepted among traditional investors and even Wall Street heavyweights — including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in recent years has called Bitcoin an “international asset” and a way of “digitizing gold.”