A British hedge fund manager declared war on bitcoin in an interview with MarketWatch on Saturday, claiming the cryptocurrency could ultimately usurp the role of centralized national currencies. Tim Bond is a portfolio manager at Odey Asset Management.
“If bitcoin starts to displace fiat currencies [government-issued currency that is not backed by a commodity], governments’ ability to tax, spend and redistribute will be severely impaired,” Bond claimed.
“To my mind, bitcoin is a particularly vile asset class,” said Bond of the decentralized currency. The hedge fund manager went on to assail the perceived negative impact of bitcoin mining on the environment, claiming that crypto mining in countries such as China was releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Bitcoin represents a threat to the dominance of state-backed currencies, in addition to the privileged status of hedge funds and the financial establishment in western economies. The United States has printed more than 35% of the dollars ever issued by the government in 2020 alone, single-handedly creating massive inflationary pressure on the US dollar. Some investors have flocked to bitcoin and crypto as an alternative. The circulation of new bitcoin is entirely divorced from any government or central bank, dependent on miners using computer power to solve equations.
If Bond is so worried about the use of an alternative currency disrupting western economies, perhaps he should direct his attention towards politicians directing central banks to print untold trillions of inflated dollars. With governments increasingly willing to print as much currency as necessary, his prediction of bitcoin usurping the dollar as the world currency is very much tenable, although it may prove to be little more than an inevitability.
