This. I mean, it's not even an ad for Bitcoin per se (it includes lines like "Bitcoin looks like a long-duration option on a highly unknown future that I could put an amount of money in that I wouldn’t mind losing about 80% of"!).
It's "look, you don't understand Bitcoin but you've heard it's doing well. We understand it very well including potential upsides and downsides, but won't make any specific predictions. Trust our quality insights into markets we're actually focused on"
Edit. Nocoiner was removed from the previous comment as it was not intended to be taken this way. My Previous Response( Nocoiner sounds a lot like Antifa or MAGA. Is the goal to lump everyone who doesn't agree with you into a group to ridicule?)
It's possible, but I don't think so. This isn't Bridgewater's style; they're too uncharismatic to meaningfully influence investor sentiment the way Donald Trump or Elon Musk can.
I think this is a starting point to try and solicit countervailing facts. Dalio's putting his reasoning out there because he wants to be proven wrong. Reading between the lines, he's probably doing this because his global macroeconomic thesis is that inflation is coming, his normal response to this would be to buy gold, and he's heard that this Bitcoin thing is the new "digital gold" that could replace physical gold ownership. If this new thesis is right, his impulse to buy gold is wrong, and the money that would've gone into it will go into Bitcoin instead. If it's all just hype, though, he should buy gold. So he puts out a public piece explaining the pros and cons of Bitcoin and then waits for the controversy, while his assistants read the online commentary and take notes of anything that might be relevant to evaluating the investment thesis.
Not quite. This isn't a poll: they'll probably tally up the overall sentiment but that's just one data point among many.
I think they're looking for arguments. They want to get the folks who've been in Bitcoin for the last 5-6 years to come out and say "Here's where you're wrong. Bitcoin can do X, Y, and Z and here are the projects that demonstrate that. People are using it for A, B, and C in countries Alpha, Beta, and Gamma and that shows exactly why Bitcoin is going to take over the world." Then Bridgewater's going to research projects X, Y, and Z and countries Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, and determine if those arguments are actually relevant.
It's intelli-trolling, basically. They're crowdsourcing their research by writing a provocative piece, targeting it at people who might know better than them, widely disseminating it on the Internet, and then seeing who responds.
It's "look, you don't understand Bitcoin but you've heard it's doing well. We understand it very well including potential upsides and downsides, but won't make any specific predictions. Trust our quality insights into markets we're actually focused on"