Novogratz Slams Dimon: Buy Bitcoin Because “We No Longer Trust Financial Institutions”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Nov 21, 2017
It must be a sign that cryptocurrencies are becoming mainstream when Bloomberg TV launches the first of a six-part series on this comparatively recent innovation. Setting the scene, Bloomberg replayed comments made in interviews from what it described as “Wall Street sceptics”, including (not surprisingly) JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Neil Dwane of Allianz Global Investors and Severin Cabannes, SocGen’s Deputy CEO. The vignettes were peppered with sound bites like “index of money laundering” and references to tulipmania, as well as the standard establishment narrative of “blockchain over Bitcoin”.
In the studio was high-profile crypto advocate, Mike Novogratz, of Galaxy Investment Partners, who is setting up a crypto investment fund (believed to be in the region of $500 million).
The Bloomberg reporters asked why he’s so bullish on the space when some of his peers, like Dimon et al, are the opposite.
You might have noticed all of those guys are over sixty and I’m not. There’s some truth to that. It’s very difficult for someone who didn’t grow up in a digital world to actually understand how we could be moving into a digital world.
We know Dwane and that’s a bit harsh. However, this was Novogratz’s take on why Bitcoin has value.
Bitcoin you can look at as digital gold. What is gold? Gold is precious metal. It could have been copper, there are lots of things on the periodic table, but way back people chose gold to have value. It has value solely because people say it has value. Bitcoin is built on an amazing technology, there’s limited supply of it, people are trusting it.
Probably the most insightful part of the interview was Novogratz’s explanation about the rationale behind the crypto revolution – which was the perfect retort to the likes of Jamie Dimon and SocGen’s Deputy CEO.
Remember, this whole revolution came out of a breakdown of trust. It came out of the ’08 financial crisis when people said we no longer trust financial institutions, we don’t trust governments and, in parts of the world, today still. If you’re in Venezuela, it’s really hard to trust the central bank, or in Zimbabwe. So, the decentralised revolution, which Bitcoin is really the poster child of, is a response to the breakdown in trust.
The Rest…HERE
