When it comes to recognition as “money” and a “store of value,” bitcoin outcompetes gold on its practicality and versatility, said Clem Chambers, CEO of ADVFN and author of the bestseller “101 Ways to Pick Stock Market Winners.”
“I could not take enough gold out of the country for it to be useful to me if I had to leave the country; if I was a South Korean and I thought the North was going to drop a bomb on my city, if I was an Iranian that was running away from people in Iran. There are all sorts of reasons why I would want to take a lot of money abroad. I can’t take more than $10,000. In gold, I can’t carry enough, it’s too heavy. I can’t take, say, 20 kilos of gold to the airport,” Chambers told Kitco News.
Gold Can’t Compete With Bitcoin As Form Of Money
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Transcript
Is bitcoin gaining mainstream acceptance and what will this mean to not only bitcoin prices but other assets too. Joining me today is Clem Chambers. He is the CEO of A.D. VFL and it’s a global stocks shares and crypto information Web site. He’s also the author of one of Amazon’s best sellers, “101 Ways to Pick Stock Market Winners.” Claire welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me on. Also my crypto book was number one for crypto about nine months ago when it came out.
Congratulations and I’m happy to talk of a crypto market with you now claim. Let’s talk about the rally we’re seeing behind bitcoin right now what’s what’s fueling it for you as far as I’m concerned.
It’s the trade war with China.
They mean the Chinese have always been big Bitcoin people. And you know I think they’re afraid that the renminbi or your own way if you want to call it their own currency is going to get knocked down. They’re going to be devaluing it. And you know if you had a lot of of your own you’d want to be out of that. Right. Unfortunately for the Chinese they can’t just take their money abroad because of their capital controls. So you’re going to stick it in bitcoin aren’t you. And you know that makes your money very very flexible. So I think there’s a rush to buy Bitcoin in China. And and that’s what’s driving it there’s also a lot of interest in Iran at the moment because obviously America might be dropping its bombs on the unfriendly guys over there.
And I think that’s also driving quite a lot of of bitcoin purchasing and Clem we hear that you know the China angle come up often but what about the institutional angle institutional investors and how we’ll also see you know a lot of U.S. brokerage firms offering a bitcoin to to their clients in 2019. You know how much of this could be fueling the rally here.
I think there’s a bit of fuel there. I’m not a big believer in institutions and crypto at this stage because I think they think it’s magic money. When I speak to institutions in the UK for example they go oh yeah crypto that weird thing no. And so you know they’re light years away from from really engaging and there’s no major investment banks running crypto desks. There’s no pension funds getting into crypto. If you look at the size of the market which is one of the exciting things as far as I’m concerned even after this big run it’s a 250 billion dollar market in totality. And when you strip away all the tokens you just look at coins and when you look at minor coins it’s way less than that. So you know it’s aggressive to say that the whole of the crypto space is equivalent to one stock like Disney. So it’s a tiny tiny tiny market but it has a massive a massive amount of interest particularly amongst the so-called millennials and particularly amongst people out in Asia. So it’s really like having a fabulously famous brand that everybody loves like Apple and then it trading at a fifth of the value that Apple trades that’s also you know what do we do with bitcoin at this price level climb you know what do you suggest to investors right now.
Well I’ve got to say. I mean I kind of called the additional bubble and I called it on Forbes When I got our 18000 and I’ve been calling it from about 5000 all the way down to 3000. I originally called the crash down to two and a half thousand but it didn’t quite go low as that.
And it’s really acquire acquire bitcoin and you know I’ve I’ve been acquiring Bitcoin over a year now since that crash since it came down and got Nissen significant under 10000 I’ve been acquiring it and now I’m feeling very happy and I think that’s the way to go.
Quiet is it a hedge for you.
Do you consider it a hedge not really. It’s too too much of an upside asset. There’s too much that could go right. I mean the hedges. I mean it’s like stored here. It’s like it’s like putting concrete in your boots to slow you down. I mean hedges are expensive and they kind of spoil your returns when you write. They kind of help your your you when you don’t loot when you don’t get it wrong. It is not really. It’s too it’s too soft too much of an amazing upside asset to be looked upon as a hedge.
I think let me ask you this then because we’ve had experts on both sides of the debate. So would you classify Bitcoin as a form of money. Is that what it is for you or is it a store of value. How do you see it.
Well it’s absolutely money. Our business gets paid a lot for advertising in crypto because it gets to us faster than it would do if they were buying some of our products particularly advertising from say an international country. Because if an advertiser wanted to say buy some of our products and with their corporate credit card we are at risk that that could be reversed out in six months time.
