Jim Rogers, a legendary investor and chairman of Rogers Holdings, spoke with China Money Network on Monday to discuss a wide variety of economic issues, such as geopolitical risks, Chinese monetary policy and artificial liquidity. One particular topic of the interview has generated quite a bit of buzz: bitcoin.
While other prominent libertarians have criticized the peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency, such as former Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Marc Faber and several Austrian economists, there have been some proponents of bitcoin. One of them may now be Rogers, who conceded that he still doesn’t know enough about them.
Rogers was asked if he had invested in bitcoins, in which he responded that he has not but wished he had done so in the early days when the virtual currency was pegged at around $13 but then climbed to as high as $1,200.
“No, I never learned enough about it. If I were smart, I would have bought it in the early days when people first told me about it. I still don’t know enough about it to invest in it,” said Rogers.
When asked if it was because he was not interested in bitcoin or because there were just too many things to invest in, Rogers explained that there were other opportunities he was interested in and that the concept behind bitcoin was a bit too complicated for him.
“There have always been plenty of great investments around the world. That’s part of it,” noted Rogers. “The other part is that it seemed to be complicated (to me). Of course, I may have missed it. If somewhere along the line, they are down and I learned enough about it, I might invest.”
In response to the future of bitcoin, the bestselling author of “Hot Commodities” stated that there are serious currency needs and problems and that the United States dollar’s future is in question after dominating the globe for close to a century.
“I do know that the world has serious currency needs and serious currency problems. The U.S. dollar has dominated the world for the past 70 to 80 years,” added Rogers. “Somebody is going to stop using the dollar eventually. We need something to compete with the U.S. dollar, and something to replace it eventually. Whether it’s the bitcoins, the RMB or seashells, I have no idea.”
Bitcoin is capturing headlines after a report discovered that the price of the virtual currency may have been manipulated in the ladder part of 2013 and the perpetrator may have allegedly been Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles.
The price of bitcoin surged over the weekend from around $450 to as high as $550.
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