Bitcoin 'Almost Uninvestable,' Says Barclays Private Bank

By Jeff Benson

According to the Chief Market Strategist at Barclays Private Bank, Gerald Moser, investors should keep Bitcoin out of their portfolio.

“While it is nigh on impossible to forecast an expected return for bitcoin, its volatility makes the asset almost 'uninvestable' from a portfolio perspective,” he said in an interview with London-based Financial News.

Barclays Private Bank caters to "high net worth individuals," more commonly known as rich people. As a private bank, it offers personalized bank accounts and mortgages as well as wealth management services. As of 2019, it was the fourth-largest private bank in the UK, with £61 billion in assets under management.

It sounds like those billions won't be going toward BTC.

One narrative has been that Bitcoin's recent price climb into record territory has been aided by institutional investors, but Moser throws cold water on the claim: “The performance of the cryptocurrency has been mostly driven by retail investors joining a seemingly unsustainable rally rather than institutional money investing on a long-term basis,” he said.

Nonetheless, some high-profile institutional investors been moving toward Bitcoin as an inflation hedge, most notably American hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, though he has only admitted to owning an amount of BTC in the single digits.

A report out yesterday from Deutsche Bank found that most money managers view Bitcoin with skepticism, believing it to be a bubble ready to pop.

Moser said that Bitcoin isn't an optimal way to diversify a portfolio, suggesting that its value can drop when traditional financial markets are doing the same. Such was the case when the value of BTC dropped to nearly $4,000 in March 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shook stock markets.

Moser agrees. Investing in Bitcoin, he said, is "more akin to a bubble phenomenon rather than a rational, long-term investment decision."

Recommended News