Another week, another billionaire weighing in on cryptocurrency.
On Monday it was hedge-fund billionaire Dan Loeb, who took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the subject. “I’ve been doing a deep dive into crypto lately,” he said. “It is a real test of being intellectually open to new and controversial ideas.”
Cryptocurrencies aren’t exactly new, but digital coins such as Bitcoin have been the subject of great controversy alright. Last week Bitcoin slumped 20%, the most since last March’s pandemic-induced selloff, after earlier soaring to record levels above $58,000. Bill Gates, who is of course a billionaire as well, recently threw cold water on retail investors looking to become the next Elon Musk—the world’s richest crypto aficionado—by buying the digital currency.
Daniel S. Loeb@DanielSLoeb1
I’ve been doing a deep dive into crypto lately. It is a real test of being intellectually open to new and controversial ideas. Culturally I compare bridging the crypto world with the old as akin to finding a portal @chbetween two distinct worlds in the multiverse.
https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1365733728304197634
Loeb’s comments were in response to a blog post titled “NFTs and a Thousand True Fans” by Chris Dixon, a general partner at the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. In Dixon’s post, he expounds upon the role that non-fungible tokens will have on digital creators.
NFTs and a Thousand True Fans
https://t.co/III9SMl75X pic.twitter.com/lwzbQMknoL
—Chris Dixon (@cdixon) February 27, 2021
NFTs have become hot commodities over the past few weeks, although they’re still causing most mere mortals to scratch their heads. At the core of these digital, artistic creations are publicly verifiable records—non-fungible tokens—that ascribe ownership and authenticate their provenance through public blockchains. Dixon argues that NFTs will make it easier for creators such as artists to earn money on the internet by cutting out intermediaries.
Meanwhile, crypto is continuing to win over the world’s biggest financial institutions. Citigroup Inc. laid out a case for Bitcoin to play a bigger role in the global financial system, saying it could become “the currency of choice for international trade” in the years ahead. Bitcoin was 8.4% at just over $49,000 on Monday.
For his part, Loeb—head of Third Point LLC—referenced Steve Jobs and F. Scott Fitzgerald and called for maintaining healthy skepticism and learning more; essentially holding two conflicting ideas in one’s head at once as a sign of a “superior intellect.”
He ended on an optimistic tone for crypto-come-latelys:
“Another conflict to overcome is the idea that being late to the crypto party will inevitably lead to one taking the sucker seat at a high stakes poker table versus this still being early days in what is just now being adopted in the mainstream,” he wrote.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.