Ray Dalio, the billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, says Bitcoin remains far from fulfilling the requirements of a global reserve currency, even though he personally maintains a small, long-standing position in it.
Dalio, who has previously disclosed owning bitcoin BTC $87,165.80, provided more specifics on Thursday, noting that the cryptocurrency has made up about 1% of his portfolio for years. “I have a small percentage of bitcoin,” he told CNBC. “I’ve had it forever—around 1% of my portfolio.”
Despite that allocation, Dalio argued that bitcoin’s inherent design limits its ability to be adopted by governments as a reserve asset. He pointed to the traceability of transactions, the transparency of the blockchain, and the potential for quantum computing to undermine the network’s security as major obstacles.
“Bitcoin isn’t going to be a reserve currency for major countries,” Dalio said. “It can be tracked, and with quantum computing, it could conceivably be controlled or hacked.” He emphasized that no government will rely on a system where every transaction is stored publicly and permanently.
Dalio recently suggested investors consider devoting roughly 15% of their portfolios to bitcoin and gold—though his personal preference remains gold. “The advantage of gold is that you can physically hold it, and you’re not reliant on anyone else to produce it,” he said.
More broadly, Dalio warned that the U.S. economy is deep into what he considers bubble conditions. Based on his proprietary bubble indicator—which uses data going back to 1900 and tracks metrics like leverage, the money supply, and wealth concentration—he estimates the U.S. is about 80% of the way toward a bubble comparable to the periods preceding the 1929 crash and the 2000 dot-com collapse.
“The signals are clear,” Dalio said. “We’re operating in bubble territory.”
