Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya is one of those enthusiastic Bitcoin hodlers who says that the asset helps to hedge against uncertainty and financial volatility in other markets.
A report by Jordan Lyanchev at Cryptopotato today characterizes Palihapitiya as saying that Bitcoin helps him to “sleep better at night.”
“The former Facebook executive has been a long-time Bitcoin proponent. Earlier this year, he said that his first BTC purchase came ten years ago when he bought one million bitcoins for about $80,” Lyanchev writes. “Just recently, he classified Bitcoin as his best investment bet. Being a vocal Bitcoin supporter, he received another BTC question while appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box. This time, the focus was on price movements and why Bitcoin hasn’t performed differently than stocks and other traditional financial assets.”
Palihapitiya, Lyanchev reports, recommends that Bitcoin holders should “separate themselves from short-term price actions” and suggests that it’s healthy to have at least 1% of a portfolio in Bitcoin, for independence from equities markets that can and will shatter like glass under the pressure of national banks’ financial manipulations.
In a clever bit of wordsmithing, Palihapitiya calls Bitcoin “orthogonal to the orthodoxy that runs the world today,” i.e. national markets for corporate stocks.
“(Bitcoin) is completely the inverse of how the financial infrastructure of the world operates,” Palihapitiya says.
Current bitcoin price action bears out this mindset somewhat – as the U.S. president’s mask removal, abrupt trashing of stimulus negotiations, and other hijinx post-COVID sent global markets south, Bitcoin is still holding pretty cool at $10,600, even as the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 both went on a diet losing a few hundred points.
In fact, Bitcoin seems to be settling into a comfortable sideways crawl at a pretty good sticking point, as anything over 10K is good with a lot of investors. There are considerable indicators right now to suggest that Palihapitiya’s sleep is pretty well-deserved.
