Dalio Expects to Soon Offer Alt-Cash Fund, Says ‘Bitcoin Won’t Escape Our Scrutiny’

Citing the need to deal with the “devaluation of money and credit,” the founder and co-chairman of the world’s largest hedge fund said he expects the firm to soon offer an alt-cash fund and a storehold of wealth fund and said, “Bitcoin won’t escape our scrutiny.”

• Calling bitcoin "one hell of an invention," Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio appears to have warmed a bit further to the largest cryptocurrency, saying it or its rivals could fill the growing need for alternatives to gold.
• While still expressing concern that bitcoin could be hacked and that governments could ban it should it become too successful, the legendary hedge fund manager bestowed praise on the cryptocurrency in a daily newsletter, saying, "I greatly admire how Bitcoin has stood the test of 10 years of time, not only in this regard but also in how its technology has been working so well and has not been hacked."
• But even with his latest comments and his recent agreement to deliver a keynote at CoinDesk's Consensus conference in late May, Dalio is far from a full-on bitcoin convert. He said his fund ran some "what-if" scenarios on bitcoin including what would happen if governments decided to ban it.
• Those scenarios, Dalio said, "paint a picture that is highly uncertain. That is why to me bitcoin looks like a long-duration option on a highly unknown future that I could put an amount of money in that I wouldn’t mind losing about 80% of."
• Dalio repeated his recent statement that he's eager to be corrected about bitcoin and learn more.

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