“Bitcoin is in a slump, but ignore the crypto deniers”; deVere Group CEO

In December 2021 Bitcoin recorded its worst monthly performance since May, but the CEO of a global financial company says you should “ignore the crypto deniers” if you want to seriously build your wealth for the long term.

Amid a cryptocurrency slump that has caused Bitcoin to drop 17 per cent during the last month of 2021, its worst performance since May (when it lost 35 per cent of its value) deVere Group CEO, Nigel Green, has said that crypto cynics “are out in force at the moment, trotting out the same old stale arguments about cryptocurrencies.”

Such criticisms are irrelevant, Green said, instead arguing that “investors who are focused on building their wealth for the long-term should ignore their tired rants. Instead, they should look at the data.”

He furthermore highlighted that despite the value drop “hor the third consecutive year, Bitcoin has outperformed both stocks and gold.”

For the year-to-date (as of end of 2021), Bitcoin is up over 40 per cent, meanwhile, the S&P500, the benchmark index of the world’s largest economy, managed 29.6 per cent, and gold is down over 7 per cent.

“I’ll tell you why this is,” Green said. “Digital money is the inevitable future in an ever more digital world.

“This is increasingly being universally accepted by institutional investors, Wall Street giants, household name investing legends, leading academic institutions, governments, and major multinational corporations.

“Meanwhile, the deniers are wheeling out old arguments against digital currencies, all of which have been answered repeatedly.

“They have two main – and baseless – anti-crypto messages. First, they say that cryptocurrencies are used by criminals. However, law enforcement agencies can more easily catch criminals who use the public ledgers on which cryptocurrencies are run compared to those who use cash or other forms of payment with no record. Are these people really saying cash isn’t used by criminals?

“Second, they insist that the crypto market is volatile. This is true, but is it necessarily always a bad thing? Many investors embrace this short-term volatility for longer-term gains. They use the lower prices of Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies to top-up portfolios.”

Earlier this month as the downturn began, Green said that “Bitcoin panic-sellers are practically giving away their cryptocurrencies to wealthy buyers” who will use the digital assets as an inflation shield.

“This scenario seems particularly likely in the current situation as they are increasingly worried that their cash, and therefore spending power, is being eroded by soaring inflation.”

Green isn’t alone on the list of people concerned about inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve said it will hike interest rates three times this year to combat inflation, causing some to warn against holding too much fiat currency.

Ray Dalio, CIO of the world’s largest hedge fund by assets, Bridgewater Associates, went as far to say that “cash is trash”, referring to how inflation will cause cash holdings to lose up to per cent a year.

Thomas Peterffy, chairman of Interactive Brokers, one of the world’s largest electronic brokers, paid for a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal in 2017 warning of the dangers that Bitcoin Futures trading posed to capital markets.

Four years later, Peterffy recently told Bloomberg that it’s wise to have two to three per cent of one’s personal wealth in cryptocurrencies, “just in case fiat currency goes to hell.”

Green concludes: “Borderless, global, decentralised currencies are the future. 

“It’s my view that to create, build and protect wealth for the long-term, the crypto deniers’ ideologies should be dismissed and the data from the financial markets should speak for itself.”