Earlier this week, JPMorgan boss Jamies Dimon called Bitcoin "useless" and even called it "fool's gold." However, billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht defends Bitcoin. During an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, October 13, Sternlicht said that it is gold that really has no value.
The investor further explained his reasons for buying Bitcoin. He noted that every Western government is printing huge sums of money. So, he meant that with so much liquidity in the market, people will put more money into BTC which also acts as a better hedge against inflation.
How much will you have invested in BTC?
With a net worth of $ 4,4 billion, Strenlicht built his fortune by investing heavily in real estate through Starwood Capital Group. Asked about Jamie Dimon's skepticism about Bitcoin, Sternlicht said:
“Gold is also a bit useless, and so is silver, I mean they have some industrial uses but they are minor. The reason I own Bitcoin is because the US government and every government in the Western Hemisphere is printing money until the end of time and that's a finite amount of something and can be traded globally. "
However, unlike the Bitcoin maximalist, Strenlicht has no special affinity with Bitcoin. It seems that the billionaire prefers Ethereum to Bitcoin. Extending his support for Ethereum, he said:
“Bitcoin is a stupid currency, it has no real purpose other than a store of value and it is insanely volatile. So Ether, I own a part of it, is a programmable Bitcoin and there are tons of other coins that are built on that system ”.
Tech billionaire Mark Cuban also echoed similar sentiments during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
Here's what other famous investors think
Even BlackRock President Larry Fink is not convinced enough of the Bitcoin story. Interestingly, he claimed to be "probably more in the field than Jamie Dimon". Adding further, Fink noted, “I am not a student of Bitcoin and where it will go, so I can't tell you if it will go to 80 or 0 dollars. But I believe there is a huge role for a digitized currency ”.
However, Fidelity director Jurrien Timmer is optimistic about BTC and expects it to hit $ 100.000 by 2023. During his recent CNBC interview, Timmer also said that Bitcoin's rally this year looks more sustainable. He added:
“This has not been a rush fueled by momentum by short-term speculators, so this gives me some confidence that this is indeed a fairly sustainable move and not a bubble that is about to burst. The trajectory is uphill and so far there is no evidence that this is a group of momentum hunters taking this up to $ 57.000 "- here the quotation in real time.
However, he also believes that Bitcoin will overtake gold in the next few years. Timmer said:
“Bitcoin is a more convex version of gold. It has increasingly scarce supply and gold does not have the network dynamics that bitcoin has, so it makes sense that bitcoin outperforms gold. Bitcoin and gold are two different players on the same team ”.
