Billionaire Ray Dalio has spoken on the possibility of the government folding Bitcoin up in the future. This has been a topic of debate among Bitcoin lovers who are weighing the possibility of the government outlawing Bitcoin. This may either be done by creating strict policies or outrightly capitalizing on the downsides of Bitcoin and making it a reason to suppress the asset.
Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Dalio the founder of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund that is worth $150 billion, explained that at the core of every country’s guidelines, is the politics of exerting control over the monetary system, in order to keep the competition at bay as the situation can easily become unfavorable for them.
He further references the situation with the U.S government and gold in the past, back when the government criminalized the private ownership of gold. As referenced in his book “The Changing World Order,” he writes that the “government leaders didn’t want gold to compete with money and credit as a storehold of wealth.”
In his words :
“Every country treasures its monopoly on controlling the supply and demand. They don’t want other monies to be operating or competing, because things can get out of control. So I think that it would be very likely that you will have it under a certain set of circumstances outlawed the way gold was outlawed.”
He admits that he is uncertain on how the government intends to go about it, but that it is possible regardless.
“Now, can they do it? Yeah. Now we get into the particulars. My understanding from people who are sort of in government surveillance is yes, they can understand they can track it. They can know who’s dealing with it. I don’t know, like, I’m not an expert on that. But, you know, there’s a whole way, is it private wallets? Is it not private wallets? How do you do this, this, and the other thing? I would suspect it would be very hard to hold up against that kind of action.”
For the Bitcoin ecosystem, its credibility has been reaffirmed over the past decade, but that in itself may be the very same reason why Dalio thinks it is a major competition to the government, although he still notes that it’s all a plus for the asset. As he said:
“Bitcoin has proven itself over the last 10 years, it hasn’t been hacked. It’s by and large, therefore, worked on an operational basis. It has built a significant following. It is an alternative, in a sense, storehold of wealth. It’s like a digital cash. And those are the pluses.”
