Paulson’s reasons for being bearish on crypto
Paulson has experience exposing at least one notable financial scam. As co-founder of the Carlyle Group, he was among the hedge fund heavyweights who saw corruption in the subprime mortgage industry and shorted the U.S. housing market before it tanked in 2007, earning himself a reported US$4 billion.
He seems just as skeptical about crypto.
“I wouldn’t recommend anyone invest in cryptocurrencies,” Paulson said during an appearance on Bloomberg TV.
“I would describe them as a limited supply of nothing" he said. "So, to the extent there’s more demand than the limited supply, the price would go up. But ... there’s no intrinsic value to any of the cryptocurrencies except that there’s a limited amount.”
It’s also worth wondering just how much value an asset can truly have if its price can swing so wildly from one minute to the next. According to analysis by CoinMarketCap, the entire crypto market shed about US$300 billion in value between the morning of Sept. 7 and the afternoon of Sept. 8.
That kind of volatility brings to mind the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s and the housing crash Paulson previously profited from. Both were the result of empty assets attracting billions in ignorant money.
“Once the exuberance wears off, or liquidity dries up, they will go to zero. I wouldn’t recommend anyone invest in cryptocurrencies,” he said.
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Invest NowThe other side of the Bitcoin
As Bitcoin values plummeted last week, at least one investor bought on the dip: the country of El Salvador.
The Sept. 7 plunge came at an awkward time, just as the Central American country was launching its plan to accept the cryptocurrency as legal tender. Despite the tumult, El Salvador purchased 150 more Bitcoin while prices were declining that day.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, clearly sees more value in Bitcoin than Paulson does. But his decision — anybody’s decision — to buy a volatile asset as its value is crashing is about as risky as investing gets.
Bukele tweeted that he purchased his 150 new coins at 11:15 Tuesday morning. (Twitter posts are automatically date stamped using local time, so that would make it 11:15 CST, or 1:15 EDT.) Assuming he nabbed them within an hour or two of the tweet, El Salvador likely landed their 150 coins for about US$51,000 a piece.
The problem is, Bitcoin ate it after the purchase. By 4:15 p.m. on Sept. 7, it was selling for US$46,927. It fell to just over US$44,000 early the next morning, before climbing back to over US$46,500 by 4:00 p.m.
That’s the catch with buying the dip. You never know if it truly is a dip until enough time passes.
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