Billionaire Barry Sternlicht, CEO of Starwood Capital, said he owns Bitcoin (BTC) and other crypto because in his view governments are “printing money now to the end of time”.
Barry Sternlicht holder of Bitcoin and crypto
According to an interview, Sternlicht, with a net worth of $4.4 billion, reportedly stated the following:
“The U.S. government, and every government in the Western Hemisphere, is printing money now to the end of time, and this is a finite amount of something and it can be traded globally”.
Precisely in order to counter the centralized system, the CEO of Starwood Capital, an investment company that manages over $95 billion, has reportedly revealed that he owns Bitcoin and Ethereum.
His strategy of being a cryptocurrency holder would also be a way to diversify his investment portfolio.
However, Sternlicht would not see eye to eye with Bitcoin, instead preferring Ethereum. In this regard, he described the crypto queen as follows:
“Bitcoin is a dumb coin. It has no real purpose other than a store of value, and it’s crazily volatile. So, ether… I own some of that. It’s a programmable Bitcoin, and there are tons of other coins built on that system”.
The skepticism about Bitcoin
Despite being a Bitcoin holder, Sternlicht argues that Ethereum would mean more as “programmable Bitcoin” and that the real change we are about to experience is dictated by blockchain technology as a whole.
Sternlicht aligns himself with the thinking of the CEO of banking giant JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, who despite offering bitcoin services to his clients, remains sceptical of the crypto queen.
At the beginning of May, Dimon is reported to have said in an interview that he is not interested in bitcoin but that his clients are. Dimon is also fresh from a more strident stance on the subject, when in 2017 he allegedly called Bitcoin a scam and then retracted his own statement.
For him too, what is really transforming the world of finance would be blockchain technology, and not Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and its bull run
While prominent people in the world of mainstream finance express their opinions, Bitcoin is in the midst of its bull run, touching its latest ATH – All Time High of $60,000.
At the time of writing, BTC is worth $59,433 with $1.123 trillion in total market capitalization and a crypto market dominance of 0.43%.
Not only that, in the fight with the SEC to see the first Bitcoin ETF approved, Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment, the Rockstar of the investment market, has now also entered the arena.
Wood reportedly filed an application with the US SEC yesterday to launch an ETF based on Bitcoin futures, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin Futures Strategy ETF (ARKA), which it wants listed on the CBOE.
