Although many remain wary of the cryptocurrency, bitcoin has garnered a wave of support in recent months – in February alone, fintech company Square and enterprise software company MicroStrategy bought large sums of additional bitcoin to add to their existing portfolios, while electric car company Tesla added billions of dollars worth of the coin to its balance sheet.
Among the latest of bitcoin bulls is personal finance expert Suze Orman.
“I love bitcoin,” Orman told Yahoo Finance in an interview published Friday. “I like the universality of it. I like that it’s there and the corporations that are investing in it.”
But, Orman clarifies, she doesn’t see bitcoin as an alternative to fiat currency – “I do not like bitcoin as a currency. I don’t like it where you’re going to buy a Tesla or something with it. I like it as a possible replacement for gold, as an investment.”
And she isn’t alone in her thinking.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban recently argued that bitcoin will be a better store of value than gold, and he sees its value as an asset rather than a currency.
“Bitcoin is not going to be a currency,” Cuban told Real Vision in an interview published Feb. 9. “It’s a crypto-asset. It’s not going to be a hedge against fiat and printing too many dollars.”
Orman, who also hosts a podcast called “Women & Money,” said she had “personally” invested in bitcoin through software company MicroStrategy.
“In June of last year, I bought MicroStrategy at about $125 a share, right around there, I believe,” she told Yahoo Finance, adding that her decision was prompted after hearing the company’s CEO speak. “I rode it all the way up and I sold that, I think it was last week, at right about $1,000 a share, because bitcoin was going up but MicroStrategy [stock] was going down.”
Despite her love for the cryptocurrency, Orman warns: “[B]itcoin is seriously risky. I would not be investing in bitcoin with money that I could not afford to lose.”
Orman recommends investing $100 a month in bitcoin, but only if that’s an amount you can afford to lose.
Bitcoin has a current market value of about $897 billion, according to Coindesk, and as of 10:40 a.m. EST Friday, the cryptocurrency is trading at $48,087.22.
All in all, “I happen to like bitcoin,” she tells Yahoo Finance.
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