Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nostrademons 1943 days ago
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.
1 comments
sebastien_b 1943 days ago
So they're basically taking the "pulse" of the population to figure out what to do.
link
nostrademons 1943 days ago
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.

link