• Billionaire Barry Sternlicht said that he’s investing in Bitcoin looking at the massive money printing by the governments further declaring Gold as “worthless”.
• The billionaire investor prefers Ethereum over Bitcoin because of its utility.

Earlier this week, JPMorgan boss Jamies Dimon called Bitcoin “worthless” and has also referred to it as “fool’s gold”. However, coming to Bitcoin defense is billionaire investors Barry Sternlicht. During a CNBC interview on Wednesday, October 13, Sternlicht said that it’s gold that’s actually worthless.

The investor further explained his reasons to buy Bitcoin. He noted that every government in the west is printing massive sums of money. Thus, he meant that with so much liquidity in the market, people are going to put more money in BTC which also serves as a better inflation hedge.

With a net worth of $4.4 billion, Strenlicht has built his fortune while massive investments in real estate via Starwood Capital Group. When asked about Jamie Dimon’s skepticism over Bitcoin, Sternlicht said:

Gold is kind of worthless too, and so is silver, I mean they have some industrial uses but they are minor. The reason I own Bitcoin is because 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.

However, unlike the Bitcoin maximalist, Strenlicht doesn’t have any special affinity towards Bitcoin. It looks like the billionaire prefers Ethereum over Bitcoin. Extending his support for Ethereum, he said:

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 that are built on that system.

Tech billionaire Mark Cuban also echoed similar sentiments during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.

Here’s what other popular investors think

BlackRock chairman Larry Fink is also not quite convinced about the Bitcoin story. Interestingly, he stated that he’s “probably more on the Jamie Dimon camp.” Adding further, Fink noted: “I’m not a student of Bitcoin and where it’s going to go so I can’t tell you whether it’s going to $80K or $0. But I do believe there is a huge role for a digitized currency”.

However, Fidelity director Jurrien Timmer is bullish on BTC and expects it to touch $100K by 2023. During his recent CNBC interview, Timmer also said that Bitcoin’s rally this year looks more sustainable. He added:

This has not been a momentum-fueled run by short-term speculators, so that gives me some confidence that this actually is a pretty sustainable move and is not a bubble that is about to burst. The trajectory is up and so far there really is no evidence that this is a bunch of momentum chasers bringing this up to $57,000.

However, he too believes that Bitcoin will outperform gold in the coming years. Timmer said:

Bitcoin is a more convex version of gold. It has an ever scarcer supply and gold does not have the network dynamics that bitcoin does, so it makes sense that bitcoin would outperform gold. Bitcoin and gold are two different players on the same team.