Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Overbit Weekly Round Up.
Kicking off today’s edition of Overbit Round Up, we take a look at one of the world’s most successful investors and his recent words on Bitcoin, despite owning some himself.
If Bitcoin achieves widespread acceptance, Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, believes regulators will eventually assume control of the cryptocurrency.
“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 Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” at the SALT conference in New York.
According to Dalio, Bitcoin lacks intrinsic value, which means it has no primary or objective value. Despite this, the billionaire investor believes Bitcoin is an excellent alternative to cash, and he owns a smaller amount of Bitcoin than he does gold in his portfolio.
“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,” Dalio said.
Closing out our last story of the week, we continue on with a theme from last week – “authorities’ interest in cryptocurrency”.
On Tuesday, 14 September, SEC chairman Gary Gensler gave a speech to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, reiterating his concerns about the cryptocurrency industry, referring to it as the “Wild West”, making a case for putting the sector under his supervision.
The majority of Gensler’s judgments of the condition of the Bitcoin sector were unfavourable. According to Gensler, only a “small percentage” of cryptocurrencies presently trading in crypto exchanges are not securities.
During the hearing, Gensler also took aim at Coinbase, the largest Bitcoin exchange by trading volume in North America.
Last week, Coinbase Global, Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong accused the SEC of “very shady conduct” for refusing to provide their reasoning for classifying tokens in their lending program as securities.
According to Gensler, the exchange “may have dozens of tokens that are securities” in its trading marketplaces.
While the cryptocurrency sector is fixated on the Howey Test, as stated in a Supreme Court decision, to define securities, the Act defines securities in a variety of ways, including investment contracts, collateral-trust deposits, and certificates of deposit, the latter of which seems to be what the SEC took offence with for Coinbase’s lending product.
Despite his harsh critique of the crypto sector, Gensler stressed that he is not “Negative or minimalist” about cryptocurrency. Though, one must imagine the implication of treating hundreds or thousands of existing projects as securities. Not to mention that Gensler claims that his company is presently working on 6,000 projects and is understaffed, a task that will only grow in magnitudes.
As before, we’ll do our best to keep you updated on the latest between crypto and authorities, as this continues to be an essential theme for the industry in 2021 and beyond.
Thanks as always for reading Overbit Weekly Round Up. Take care until next time!