Billionaire investing icon Ray Dalio says Bitcoin has problems.
In a new interview with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, Dalio says he owns a little BTC, but believes it’s inferior to gold and unappealing to central banks.
“Bitcoin is limited in supply… It’s perceived as money, as a storehold of wealth, that is unlikely to be significantly held by central banks and many others because of the number of problems it has.”
The Czech National Bank became the first central bank to buy Bitcoin last month as part of a $1 million test portfolio of digital assets – but the portfolio is separate from the bank’s official reserves.
Dalio cites Bitcoin’s public transaction ledger, which pseudonymously tracks users’ wallet addresses and transactions, as a key issue.
“Transactions could all be followed in Bitcoin. One can monitor what the transactions are. Governments can monitor what the transactions are. And governments can interfere with those transactions.
Just like we talked about earlier, when we talked about gold is the only asset that you can have that they can’t mess with and control, you’ve got it. That’s not true of Bitcoin.”
Bitcoin proponents argue that BTC is the strongest bearer asset, enabling users to access and transfer their wealth anywhere on earth by remembering a 12-word security phrase.
Governments have found indirect ways to intervene, compelling crypto companies to implement KYC/AML rules, freeze accounts and block transactions linked to sanctioned entities.
Dalio says he’s also concerned about the security of Bitcoin’s network.
“And then there are other issues in Bitcoin, like we talked about the possibility, would somebody make synthetic gold like they would make synthetic diamonds as a risk?
Well, in terms of Bitcoin being cracked, broken, all sorts of things, and controlled, it has those issues. So that’s how I look at Bitcoin…
I’m bearish on fiat currencies. So when I look at the world, I’m just trying to say, “What do I hold?”. So I hold a little bit of Bitcoin. I have a little bit of Bitcoin, but, for me, it’s not as attractive as gold.”
Bitcoin has maintained an uptime of over 99.98% for more than 16 years since its inception in 2009, with 100% reliability since 2013 and no successful hacks to its protocol.
It is often criticized for the extensive energy it takes to secure the network and mine new BTC, as well as potential quantum risks and the asset’s extreme price volatility.
Gold has been used as an extremely reliable store of value and hedge against inflation for over 6,000 years and has zero quantum concerns. Gold mining has long faced environmental criticism of its own, with the precious metal critiqued over portability, theft and counterfeiting risks.
The US government has confiscated both gold and Bitcoin in the past, such as through Executive Order 6102 in 1933 for gold and seizures of both gold and Bitcoin from criminal operations, including a $15 billion BTC haul in 2025, underscoring that no asset is entirely immune to governmental intervention.
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