Former BlackRock Executive Believes Bitcoin Is Here to Stay

A controversial former BlackRock executive says bitcoin can occupy a spot in everyone’s portfolio.

Speaking on Layah Heilpern’s podcast, Dowd said that bitcoin holds promise because it can be transacted digitally

Dowd is an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, having attended the institution from 1985 to 1989. He started his career on Wall Street, working for HSBC bank. Dowd was a managing director and equity portfolio manager at BlackRock from 2002 to 2012, managing a $2 billion fund that grew to $14 billion under his guidance. He currently serves as a consultant to Symphonic Capital LLC. He was recently suspended from Twitter for making controversial statements about Covid-19 vaccines.

Bitcoin will be in everyone’s portfolio

Dowd believes bitcoin is here to stay and will hold a spot in everyone’s portfolio. The notion of holding crypto as part of a diversified portfolio is not new. Fidelity Investments locked horns with the Labor Department earlier this year for creating digital asset accounts in its 401(k) plans which are slated for a 2023 launch.

Dowd likened the crypto market downturn to the dot-com bubble. He believes that more robust cryptocurrencies will outlast the current crypto bear market while smaller ones will capitulate. He said that bitcoin is running to be the Amazon of the crypto era that remains standing after “90%” of the other cryptocurrencies collapse. Dowd’s thesis is that bitcoin’s growth will be fueled by its transparency, the freedom it provides, and its technology.

While debating the merits of gold, Heilpern said it would be easier to use bitcoin in an emergency than to have gold.

In Dowd’s opinion, it will be a long time before bitcoin’s prices hit Nov. 2021 highs. He did not disclose any bitcoin holdings on the podcast.

Dowd’s concerns about CBDC

Heilpern’s podcast deals with issues of freedom, bitcoin, and impending authoritarianism. Dowd made some controversial statements in the interview, saying that central banks used the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to print more money. He believes we are at the end of the existing debt-based monetary system with crypto markets stuttering and the focus on central bank digital currencies. He cites concerns that the central banks will be able to leverage the CBDC platform to create social scores.

Bitcoin had notched up towards that $22,500 mark by midday eastern time, data from Coingecko shows. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization dipped sharply following the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin in May 2022, touching the $17700 mark on Saturday, June 18, 2022, from highs of over $69K in November last year.

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