Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya Questions Bitcoin’s Legitimacy Amid US Banking Crisis

Billionaire venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya is weighing in on Bitcoin (BTC) and questioning whether the king crypto could actually be a legitimate alternative to the current financial system.

In a new episode of the All-In Podcast, early Bitcoin investor says that the relatively small number of BTC users around the world suggests that most people do not see the king crypto as a potential substitute to the global banking system.

“If you look at the total number of non-zero Bitcoin wallet addresses in the world, and let’s be extremely generous and say it’s a hundred million, there are still seven billion people in the world. And so I just think everybody that tries to speak about the fragility of the US and worldwide banking system is right. And that part I think is quite lucid and unemotional. But every time they try to connect it to Bitcoin, they sound like a crazy person because they’re just talking their book.”

Palihapitiya also says that if Bitcoin was a real answer to address concerns over the global dominance of the US dollar and banking stability, he would have expected the price of BTC to have gone a lot higher.

BTC was worth $19,662 on March 10th, the day Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. It is trading for $27,044 at time of publishing.

“And the best example to demonstrate this is in all of this chaos if Bitcoin or crypto assets, in general, were truly a legitimate off-ramp and salvation from US dollar hegemony and all of this stuff, why isn’t Bitcoin at least at $35,000 a coin right now? It’s barely above $28,000. It really hasn’t moved that much. And I think the real answer is that most people in Bitcoin are not trying to hedge their existing fiat currency exposure. They’re just picking off people in retail, and they are just day-trading this thing.

How else do you explain an asset that has not absolutely ripped in the face of all of this terrible news about the financial system? And I think the answer is that it’s still a cul-de-sac of users. It’s not broadly available, not broadly adoptable, not broadly used. I still believe that it’s valuable. I was the earliest proponent of Bitcoin [in] 2011, 2012. So I believe that there’s a place for it in one’s portfolio, but I just think connecting these dots misses the point.”

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