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Billionaire Venture Capitalist Believes Gold Has Met Its Match in Bitcoin

Gerelyn Terzo
2 min read

One billionaire venture capitalist has weighed in on the bitcoin vs. gold debate. Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital, said during CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference that gold has met its match. He stated,

“I can pretty confidently say that bitcoin I think has effectively replaced gold. And it will continue to do so. And so that market cap is just going going to grow.”

Palihapitiya opted not to provide a target for the bitcoin price, but he forecast in early 2021 that it was potentially barreling toward $200,000, the timetable for which was uncertain but could be anywhere from five to 10 years. Bitcoin is currently trading below $42,000 after having touched on $50,000 in early September.

Inflationary Hedge

Palihapitiya is worried about inflation continuing to rear its head. He is looking for assets that are natural inflationary hedges including hypergrowth, cash-generative and non-correlated assets, the latter of which is the camp that bitcoin falls into.

Bitcoin failed to perform like a hedge earlier this week when the Evergrande headlines surfaced. The China-based property developer’s debt woes sent stocks reeling and took the bitcoin price down with them. Fear took over as investors fled stocks and cryptocurrencies and ran to fixed-income securities and gold.

Meanwhile, Palihapitiya is also a fan of the Solana blockchain, which is a competitor to the second-biggest cryptocurrency, Ethereum. Solana’s profile is on the rise and its native coin is currently the seventh-biggest cryptocurrency based on market cap.

Bitcoin vs. Gold

While the bitcoin price might be down for the month of September, it is still up year-to-date. So far in 2021, the bitcoin price has advanced 24% while the gold price is down about 7% in the same period.

Palihapitiya may not be willing to suggest where the bitcoin price may be headed next, but he does expect that it “could get very big.” He says,

“We all need to pay attention to it.”

The venture capitalist goes on to compare bitcoin to the internet, which makes it hard for lawmakers to control.

“I think it’s very hard to kill. It’s completely headless. It’s entirely peer-to-peer. I think that’s both scary and exhilarating,” said Palihapitiya.

Palihapitiya isn’t the only billionaire who is bullish on bitcoin at the Delivering Alpha event. Orlando Bravo, co-founder of private equity firm Thoma Bravo, is also in attendance, where he revealed that he also owns bitcoin.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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