Billionaire investor Ray Dalio recommends 15% allocation in long-term assets like bitcoin and gold

Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, gave a soft recommendation for investors to keep 15% of their money in bitcoin in an appearance on CNBC’s Master Investor Podcast on Sunday.

"If … you were optimizing your portfolio for the best return-to-risk ratio, you would have about 15% of your money in gold or bitcoin," said Dalio, who earned his fame as an investor for managing what was for many years the world’s largest hedge fund. "I'm strongly preferring gold to bitcoin, but that’s up to you."

Dalio noted that he has "some bitcoin, but not much."

Like many of his public talks in recent years, Dalio spent much of the interview focused on the dire economic circumstances the U.S. government has found itself in as the national debt continues to accumulate. “The issue is the devaluation of money,” Dalio said.

“We are at the point of no return,” Dalio warned, arguing that the government will likely need to issue nearly $12 trillion more Treasuries next year simply to service its mounting debt. It isn’t just the U.S., either; all Western countries are facing a similar "debt doom loop," he argued.

"Just like in the ’70s or the ’30s, they will all tend to go down together," Dalio said of Western economies. "We’ll pay attention to their relative movements, but they will all decline in value — relative not to fiat currencies, but to hard currencies."

However, in times of crisis, long-term currencies like gold and bitcoin can act as “an effective diversifier,” he noted. 

That said, Dalio has long had a bittersweet view of bitcoin , and this interview is no different. “I can't say exactly how effective [bitcoin] is as a form of money, but it’s being perceived by many as an alternative,” he said, also at times raising concerns about onchain privacy and the longevity of code. 

Both gold and bitcoin have hit record highs this year.