Bitcoin Useful as Investor ‘Tip-Off,’ Says Gold Bug Who Predicted 90% Price Crash

Bitcoin (BTC) could inform investors worried about the United States-China trade war, an executive from financial planning and wealth advisory firm Bleakley Advisory Group told CNBC in an interview on June 4.

On the back of stock market weakness over fears the trade war could escalate and the dollar weaken, Bleakley’s chief investment officer, Peter Boockvar, drew attention to bitcoin’s recent behavior and highlighted gold as a potential alternative.

A well-known gold bug, Boockvar nonetheless said he did not advise buying bitcoin itself, but that it was a useful measure of market sentiment.

“I watch bitcoin as a signal, as an indicator, not because I want to own it as I’d rather own gold as an alternative currency,” he told the network’s Futures Now segment. He added:

“Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen this sharp rise in bitcoin and to me that was saying something in terms of what markets were thinking, about what the Fed was going to do, the turmoil created by the threatened tariffs.”

BTC/USD passed $9,000 for the first time in over a year last week, with various sources considering geopolitical events as a catalyst to the cryptocurrency’s two-month-long bull run.

Boockvar said he did not have a taste for bitcoin investing, echoing comments by fellow gold enthusiast Peter Schiff in an interview last month.

The correlation between the two assets, however, cemented bitcoin’s status as something worth watching in order to influence investment moves, he implied. Gold had rallied shortly after the bitcoin bull run began.

“I don’t recommend bitcoin in either direction because I don’t really care for it in terms of an asset, but I do care for it as a signalling mechanism that I think was a tip-off to this bounce in gold,” Boockvar noted.

In January 2018, as BTC/USD was coming off its all-time highs around $20,000, Boockvar warned that the pair could lose 90% of its value, something which has so far failed to materialize after a $3,130 floor appeared in December.