Gold is losing ground to bitcoin in inflation hedge race
In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, billionaire hedge fund manager, Paul Tudor Jones said bitcoin is beating gold.
Jones, whose firm controls close to $40 billion in assets under management, was reminded by host, Andrew Ross Sorkin that during his last appearance on the show, back in June, he had called bitcoin a hedge against inflation.
Continuing on from his earlier remarks, Tudor Jones responded, “Bitcoin would be a great hedge.”
“Crypto would be an excellent inflation hedge,” he added.
Therefore, the question remains: “At these prices, does bitcoin still represent a hedge?”
“My portfolio has crypto in the single digits. My fund has a small position in crypto. Increasingly, we are living in a digitized world,” said Jones. “Crypto has a place, and at this point, it is winning the race against gold. Inflation is one of its main benefits. At the moment, it is better than gold.”
Inflation fears have renewed investors’ interest in assets that can act as hedges – including bitcoin. The price of gold has not responded to rising cost pressures in recent weeks, and the move away from gold ETFs onto bitcoin funds seems to be gathering momentum. Despite the shift in flows, market strategists believe bitcoin will remain bullish throughout the year.
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Bloomberg’s data shows that the $56 billion SPDR Gold Shares ETF, ticker GLD, is set to lose another $3.6 billion in outflows over the next month, marking its fourth straight month of outflows.
Last time Jones and Sorkin squared off on Squawk Box, the billionaire recommended that investors take a 5% position in bitcoin, describing it as a portfolio diversifier.
The Tudor Investment Corporation’s CIO used to describe his position as a “defensive position for myself and my family, that I don’t even look at anymore.”
But he tempered his enthusiasm by adding his concerns about bitcoin mining’s carbon footprint.
Jones is one of many executives at large investment companies who are now encouraging clients to diversify their portfolios with crypto.
Back in January, Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd, whose firm stewards $325 billion, gave bitcoin a $400,000 price projection and admitted that some of Guggenheim’s private funds had already bought it.
BlackRock’s CIO, Rick Rieder, said early in the year that the company was “starting to dabble” into bitcoin. BlackRock controls over $9 trillion in assets as of June, this year.
An SEC filing revealed BlackRock had invested in two U.S.-based bitcoin mining firms by the end of summer.
A new all-time high was reached of $66,812 by the pioneer crypto on Wednesday. This record comes in the wake of ProShares launching a bitcoin futures ETF on Tuesday.
