Despite Bear Market, Billionaire David Rubenstein Remains a Crypto Proponent

American billionaire and former White House official David Rubenstein reiterated his pro-crypto stance and predicted that the industry is “not going away.”

His comments come amid a market decline that has hit many digital assets. Bitcoin, for example, is currently down 70% from its all-time high in November 2021.

Crypto offers financial freedom

In a recent interview for Bloomberg, the co-founder of The Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, said that he has not always supported the cryptocurrency sector.

Years ago, I thought of it as something that could bring joy to people, like going to Las Vegas to gamble or play golf. However, he warned those who want to enter the crypto world for this reason should be careful about how much money they hand out:

“If you enjoy looking at screens all day and say you just won a lot of money in crypto and so on, allocate enough so that if you lose, it’s not the end of the world.”

Later, however, Rubenstein changed his position and now sees crypto as a sector that is here to stay. In his opinion, the niche is especially popular among young people in their 20s and 30s who have libertarian values ​​and want independence from centralized institutions:

“Now I think crypto isn’t going away like some people think, and while you can argue that it’s worthless in some ways, a lot of things that people buy may not be worth anything. I’d say it’s clear that a lot people have a libertarian view of life, and tend to like that which is kind of anti-government.”

To prove his point, Rubenstein pointed to Russia, where numerous oligarchs had their funds frozen after Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine. Having cryptocurrencies could have alleviated these problems because of the financial autonomy they provide:

“The government doesn’t know what you have, you can move it anywhere in the world, it won’t be devalued by government inflation, it’s not the worst thing to put some of your money into.”

The billionaire later admitted that he had not diversified his portfolio with digital assets. However, he and some of his relatives have invested in companies that serve the sector.

“The genie is out of the bottle”

Rubenstein believes that the real rise in crypto began in early 2021, when the prices of most assets were hitting new all-time highs every few days.

In April last year, he argued that “the genie is out of the bottle”, meaning that authorities and central banks cannot reduce consumer interest in the industry.

Again, he opined that bitcoin and altcoins could be very beneficial monetary tools for war-torn nations, such as the Russians and Ukrainians, who have significant problems with their fiat currencies:

“Having some cryptocurrency probably makes you feel better that you can have something that’s out of government control and not dependent on the bank opening the doors for you.”