The American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist – Stanley Druckenmiller – believes the US economy is heading towards recession “sometime in 2023.” Amid his projection of an “inflationary bull market,” the billionaire would choose to own bitcoin rather than gold.
Over the past month, bitcoin’s price has been hovering around $30,000, which has been considered a disappointing level compared to last year’s all-time high of nearly $70K. However, the situation turned even grimmer today (June 13), with BTC plunging under $24,000. Despite the massive retrace and the panic among some investors, Stan Druckenmiller remains bullish on the asset.
In a recent interview, he predicted that the crypto industry is still in its early days, and it has the potential to play a key role in the future monetary world. Additionally, the American thinks blockchain technology has a high chance of incorporating itself into the business sector in the next decade:
“Crypto is a movie that is about to be played out and one that I don’t want to bet on conviction, but I will be very surprised if blockchain isn’t a real force in our economy, say five years from now, ten years from now.”
Asked how he envisions the future of the US economy, Druckenmiller argued it will slip into recession in 2023 while inflation will keep its galloping pace. As such, he recommended that holding bitcoin during certain turbulent times is a much better step than owning gold:
“If we have an irresponsible monetary policy and inflation going forward, if it’s in a bull phase, you want to own bitcoin, but if it’s in a bear face, you want to own gold.”
In addition, Druckenmiller said he finds the asset class intriguing and is “certainly monitoring it.” Nonetheless, he admitted not understanding it as well as the younger generations. Many youngsters are aware of the current technology innovations, including digital assets, and prefer to own bitcoin as they expect to benefit from it in the future.
On the contrary, “old curmudgeons that secretly want the world to fall apart” have an outdated understanding of the matter and deal with gold.
The American has been quite persistent in his crypto stance over the past few years. In 2020, he revealed being a BTC HODLer:
“I’m a bit of a dinosaur, but I have warmed up to the fact that bitcoin could be an asset class that has a lot of attraction as a store of value.”
Last year, Druckenmiller blamed the US Federal Reserve and other central banks for harming the financial ecosystem with their controversial policies (printing colossal amounts of fiat currencies being the main one):
“The problem has been clearly identified now. It is Jerome Powell and the rest of the world’s central bankers. There is a lack of trust.”
In his view, cryptocurrencies could be a solution to the problem as the broad society will look for alternatives to the devaluating dollar, euro, and other national currencies.
