Mexican Billionaire Invests 10% of Liquid Portfolio in Bitcoin

Update: Pliego has issued a tweet clarifying that he has invested 10% of his liquid portfolio, not his net worth, into Bitcoin. The article has been updated to reflect this.

Mexico’s second-richest man Ricardo Salinas Pliego is the latest billionaire to jump on the Bitcoin promise. In a tweet today, he revealed holding 10% of his liquid portfolio in the asset and urged followers to purchase a Bitcoin-focused book.

Pliego is the founder of Grupo Salinas, a 2001-founded company with interests in consumer electronics, sports, and television networks. He is worth $11.7 billion as per a Forbes report from earlier this year (however, Pliego said he is worth $13.8 billion in a separate tweet today).

"Here some clarifications on my post: 10 % of "liquid portfolio" in BTC...not of my net worth! The other 90% is in precious metals miners. For me it's no "stampede", started with Grayscale at 800 dlls BTC in 2016," Pliego tweeted today. Grayscale is a crypto fund manager largely for institutional investors (that has now reached $10 billion in crypto assets under management)

But Pliego’s not asking people to blindly jump in the asset class without basic education about what it does and how is it better than the current financial regime.

“Today I recommend THE BITCOIN STANDARD, this book is the best and most important to understand #Bitcoin. Bitcoin protects the citizen from government expropriation,” he said in a tweet.

The sentiment is similar to the one increasingly voiced by prominent investors and technology companies around the world—that of holding Bitcoin as a hedge against the incessant money printing (to artificially save the economy) and rising inflation in the coming years.

Such concerns are not overstated. Countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and a few others are currently suffering from rampant inflation and the absolute devaluation of their fiat currencies—which Pliego highlighted in a separate tweet earlier today.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s not stopping. The pioneer cryptocurrency crossed the $18,000 mark in the early hours today, a price last seen in January 2018.