Suze Vs. Janet On Bitcoin

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been sounding the alarms about bitcoin

and cryptocurrency. At a conference in late February, Yellen called bitcoin “an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions” and “a highly speculative asset.” She also asserted – without evidence – that she fears “it’s often used for illicit finance.” Yellen leveled similar charges against cryptocurrency as a whole at her confirmation hearings in January.

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But to paraphrase a famous 1970s commercial for a now-defunct stock brokerage, when Janet Yellen trash-talks bitcoin, many people in the financial world don’t seem to listen. Instead, they are listening to companies like Square

SQ
, MicroStrategy

MSTR
, and Tesla

TSLA
that are putting their cash reserves into bitcoin. And they are listening to analysts from Citi, who say in a new report that “bitcoin is at the tipping point of its existence” and could “become the currency of choice for international trade.”

And now, ordinary investors are listening to personal finance expert Suze Orman, who told Yahoo Finance in a segment that ran Thursday, “I love bitcoin!” She continued, “I like the universality of it. I like that it’s just there and there are corporations that are investing in it.” Orman added that she views bitcoin “as a possible replacement for gold as an investment.”

In the interview, Orman revealed that she “played” bitcoin by investing in MicroStrategy last year, and “rode it all the way up” as the company’s stock price soared along with the value of bitcoin, due to in significant part to the firm’s bitcoin holdings. She even recommended to those who could afford to lose their investment, putting $100 a month in bitcoin through a Paypal

PYPL
account.

Orman cautioned that bitcoin was “seriously risky,” and said she tells investors, “I would not be investing in bitcoin with money that I could not afford to lose.

Orman’s endorsement of bitcoin is a serious blow to bitcoin’s progressive critics like Yellen, as Orman’s personal finance tips appeal to both red and blue. Indeed, Orman is somewhat of a progressive herself.

In the Yahoo Finance interview, she told host Andy Serwer that she loved Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “more than life itself,” and that she is supportive of Warren’s proposed “wealth tax.” Orman said, though, that she was worried about whether the money raised by such a tax would be spent wisely by Congress. Skepticism about the effects of massive government spending and fears of looming inflation across a broad cross-section of Americans are major factors fueling the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, despite the…