The CEO of a $60 billion hedge fund says Americans should be alarmed about the country’s rapidly expanding debt. New numbers from the Treasury Department show the national debt climbed from $34.393262 trillion on March 1st to $34.561173 trillion on March 20th, a rise of $167.911 billion in just 20 days. At this point, the […]
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Citadel CEO Ken Griffin says inflation may have peaked but a recession is coming. “We’re in a very uncertain time for investors,” the executive cautioned, adding that the Federal Reserve “is grappling with a level of inflation we haven’t seen in a long time.” Citadel’s Ken Griffin on U.S. Economy, Inflation, Recession, and Cryptocurrency Kenneth […]
“I have to live with the reality that an asset’s worth what people perceive it to be worth,” Ken Griffin stated.
Billionaire Citadel Securities founder Ken Griffin has compared cryptocurrency to abstract art, opining that the value of both is derived from the eye of the beholder.
Griffin — who Forbes estimates to be worth around $26 billion — has made numerous anti-crypto comments and urged others away from it in the past, but appears to have gradually softened his stance over time. He also said that Citadel will make a play once it can do so in a compliant manner.
Speaking on the value of crypto at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles on May 2, Griffin drew comparisons with his collection of “American abstract art", noting that:
"Why is a painting worth $10 million? It's oil on canvas. So value is in the eyes of the beholder."
While he may never become a full-blown proponent, Griffin appears to be at least happy to sit on the fence on a personal level as his market-making firm works to roll out crypto services.
In that regard, he also noted that “the institutional increase in interest in cryptocurrency,” helped sway the firm, and may see it provide “liquidity to institutional, and potentially retail, investors.”
“I have to live with the reality that an asset’s worth what people perceive it to be worth.”
In terms of Citadel’s views on crypto, Griffin said it was a “great hotspot topic of debate” and suggested that the younger portion of his colleagues are the ones pushing for the company to make a play:
“All my colleagues who are younger than I am, probably think I’m a dinosaur on this issue. They’re big believers. They believe that cryptocurrency has an important role in the global economy as a means of facilitating payment in a web3 world.”
Still, Griffin outlined that the company will take its time to conduct due diligence before making any official moves, as he paid particular focus to the supposed threat of North Korea.
Griffin in general has held highly skeptical views towards the crypto sector, going as far as to describe Bitcoin (BTC) as a “jihadist call” against the U.S. dollar back in October.
However, he did also outline that he sees blockchain as “really interesting technology,” despite failing to see its value and argued that Ethereum-based tokens could one day replace BTC as the top dogs in crypto.
In March, he even admitted that it was a mistake to be in the “naysayer camp” given the total market cap of crypto sat at around $2 trillion at the time, and noted that Citadel could soon make a plunge into the sector.
Related: Buffett back bashing Bitcoin, claims it ‘doesn’t produce anything’
Despite his relatively neutral comments on this latest occasion, the billionaire did however manage to squeeze in a fairly critical dig at crypto. Griffin argued that it's easy for him to see how firms such as Amazon and Apple have been able to benefit the user with their services and products, but can’t say the same for Bitcoin.
“These are businesses that have really, clearly changed the world for the better. I’m still looking for that story of how crypto has made the world so much better. I’m looking at stories about how Bitcoin consumes as much power as a small country,” he said.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, a bitcoin skeptic, admits he has not been right on his crypto call. He now says: “It’s fair to assume that over the months to come, you will see us engage in making markets in cryptocurrencies.” Citadel Getting Into Crypto The CEO and founder of financial services firm Citadel, billionaire Ken […]
Company founder Ken Griffin has backtracked on his anti-crypto stance and wants his firm to offer digital assets to its clients this year.
American multinational hedge fund and financial services company Citadel is poised to enter cryptocurrency markets this year.
Speaking on Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein, Citadel founder Ken Griffin commented on the current state of markets in light of recent geopolitical conflicts stating that they are at a “very volatile inflection point.”
When the interview turned to digital assets, Griffin who has previously warned the younger generation away from them and said “there’s no need for cryptocurrencies,” revealed that the firm would be engaging in crypto asset markets this year.
“It’s fair to assume that over the months to come, you will see us engage in making markets in cryptocurrencies.”
Its quite the turnaround from November 2017, when Griffin said: “Bitcoin right now has many of the elements of the tulip bulb mania we saw back hundreds of years ago in Holland.” At the time, when BTC was trading around $10,000, he added “these bubbles tend to end in tears. And I worry about how this bubble might end.”
During the Bloomberg Wealth interview Griffin acknowledged that he was wrong to have been in the "naysayer camp" with regard to digital assets. “Crypto has been one of the great stories in finance over the course of the last 15 years,” he stated before adding:
“And I’ll be clear, I’ve been in the naysayer camp over that period of time. But the crypto market today has a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers, which tells you that I haven’t been right on this call.”
He said that he was still skeptical but “there are hundreds and millions of people in this world today who disagree with that.”
“To the extent that we’re trying to help institutions and investors solve their portfolio allocation problems, we have to give serious consideration to being a market maker in crypto.”
Citadel analyzes global markets employing a range of strategies to deliver market-leading investment returns to its capital partners. Griffin wants the firm to encompass crypto assets into these strategies over the coming months.
In January, Citadel Securities announced its first outside investment worth $1.15 billion from two prominent crypto venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Paradigm. Citadel, which currently has around $38 billion in assets under management, was valued at $22 billion following the investments.
Related: Citadel Securities takes in $1.15B investment from Sequoia and Paradigm
As recent as November, Griffin remained highly skeptical about cryptocurrencies stating at the time that people are focused on new ideas and that he worried “that some of this passion is misplaced when it comes to cryptocurrencies.”
The billionaire investor did go on to tout the properties of Ethereum, however, opining that assets based on Ethereum will eventually replace Bitcoin which has a greater environmental impact.
Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin signaled out crypto as a threat to the US dollar, and stated that "I wish all this passion and energy that went to crypto was directed towards making the United States stronger."
Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin and former U.S. President Donald Trump have both slammed digital currencies as a threat to the U.S. dollar.
Griffin, the founder of the $38 billion hedge fund Citadel LLC, told the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 4, that crypto is "a jihadist call that we don't believe in the dollar." He expressed his dismay over the younger generation working on dollar alternatives in the crypto sector:
"What a crazy concept this is, that we as a country embrace so many bright, young, talented people to come up with a replacement for our reserve currency."
"I wish all this passion and energy that went to crypto was directed towards making the United States stronger," he added.
Griffin however doesn't not seem opposed to making money out of crypto in the future. He said that Citadel is yet to follow the plunge of other hedge funds and traditional financial institutions into crypto because of the “lack of regulatory certainty.”
The hedge fund manager said that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler was “spot on” in his comments from August, when he said that if crypto is going to achieve its potential it “needs to come within public policy frameworks.”
"Doing so will make it a smaller market, because it'll become a far more competitive market when there's regulatory clarity," Griffin said. "And that will be good. A small market, less people involved who are frankly just trying to make a quick buck."
Meanwhile former US President Donald Trump warned against the threat to the dollar from China’s digital yuan.
During an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Adam Shapiro on Oct. 5, Trump provided his take on China, the U.S. economy and the crypto sector.
Speaking on the Chinese government’s moves to ban crypto in the country led by Xi Jinping, Trump said the clampdown was a part of Jinping’s moves to squash competition as he works on “his own currency, whether it’s crypto or otherwise,” and suggested that the U.S. government should do the same:
“I'm a big fan of our currency and I don't want to have other currencies coming out and hurting or demeaning the dollar in any way.”
“If you look at a monetary system based on the dollar, if you start losing credibility, all of a sudden you're going to lose that strong monetary system,” Trump said. The controversial former president said the U.S. government’s “horror show” with the Mexican border and pull back from Afghanistan had also affected the credibility of the greenback.
Trump is also no fan of cryptocurrency. In late August, he stated that crypto was “potentially a disaster waiting to happen” as he questioned whether digital assets were “fake”:
“They [cryptocurrencies] may be fake. Who knows what they are? They are certainly something that people don’t know very much about.”
