Ray Dalio would choose gold over bitcoin ‘if you put a gun to my head’

Ray Dalio acknowledged that if faced with a life-or-death decision on holding bitcoin or gold, the answer would be very easy for him.

“If you put a gun to my head, and you said, ”˜I can only have one,”™ I would choose gold,” said the founder and co-chairman of Westport”™s Bridgewater Associates in a CNBC interview.

“I own a very small amount of bitcoin ”“ I”™m not a big owner,” Dalio continued. “There are certain assets that you want to own to diversify the portfolio, and bitcoin is something like a digital gold.”

Dalio also used the interview to repeat his warning that the federal government could outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a threat to the strength of the U.S. currency.

He pointed to the precedent set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 that transferred all of the country”™s privately held gold titles and certificates to the U.S. Treasury, adding that a significant economic downturn could prompt the government to take a similar action with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Dalio had long been skeptical of the cryptocurrency”™s viability and volatility, but last December he reversed course with his first on-the-record endorsement of bitcoin, telling a Reddit audience that it “could serve as a diversifier to gold and other such storehold of wealth assets.”

In May, he acknowledged for the first time via CoinDesk news site that he had bitcoin in his portfolio.