Mike Novogratz Fights Top Economist Over BTC

Bitcoin bull and hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz has gotten into a bit of a battle with top economist Steve Hanke over bitcoin. The latter is against it, while the former is practically willing to bet everything he has on the asset.

Mike Novogratz Comes to Bitcoin’s Aid

In a recent tweet, Hanke took aim at bitcoin, calling it a “fool’s game.” He wrote:

Bitcoin is a highly speculative asset, not a currency. Unreliability, lack of stability, and susceptibility to fraud will continue to plague this cryptocurrency. Don’t be tricked; buying bitcoin is a fool’s game.

In retaliation, Novogratz commented:

Steve, it has outperformed all assets [year to date] over two years and three years on a risk adjusted weighting (sharpe ratio). It’s been safer than JPM and Google. Run the numbers yourself.

Novogratz has always been there to support bitcoin, even when nobody else is. He’s commented in the past that he thinks the price of BTC could potentially rise to $500,000 as we get closer to 2030, though frankly, if the asset simply reaches a price of about $30,000 by the end of the year, he’ll be happy with that considering the terrible bear run it had during 2022 and how hard it’s been for the asset to pull itself out of the doldrums.

2022 was arguably the worst year on record for bitcoin. The token lost more than 70 percent of its value over the course of 12 short months. Initially, the asset was trading at a new all-time high of about $68,000 per unit. This was in November of 2021. From there, it incurred a series of losses that ultimately brought it down into the mid-$16K range by the end of 2022.

Now, however, the asset appears to be picking itself back up as at the time of writing, the currency is trading at $28,000. This is nowhere near where it was just a year and a half ago, but we’re certainly getting there.

There’s still a lot of room for healing, but the fact that BTC has the initiative to be pushing itself the way it is seems to be giving a lot of fans and investors hope that perhaps the negativity of the previous year can finally be put behind them. That $28,000 price shows that the currency has managed to add roughly $12,000 to its value in just a few months.

Some, Like the SEC, Don’t Think Assets Like BTC Are Reliable

Sadly, while there are certainly people out there who would agree with Novogratz that bitcoin is something unique, there are other parties that will probably side with Hanke like the SEC. In a recent statement, the agency said:

The only money you should put at risk with any speculative investment is money you can afford to lose entirely.

Tags: bitcoin, Mike Novogratz, Steve Hanke