Howard Marks is the founder of Oaktree Capital, a company specializing in alternative investment strategies, whose website reported that since last month it already has $ 99 billion in assets under management
Thus, as a result of an exchange of views with representatives of Goldman Sachs, the Bank of America and other Wall Street analysts, the entrepreneur drafted a controversial 23-page coin manifesto on digital coins, full of research notes and quotes Newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Marks called the cryptoactive industry an "unfounded fashion," to the point where it made comparisons with the Great Bubble of the South Seas of the eighteenth century: an intimidating speculative crisis that occurred in Britain, affecting the actions of the South Sea Company-an enterprise that at that time had full control of British commerce with numerous nations. It was one of those events where the perception of reality becomes reality.
Marks said:
"In my opinion, digital coins are nothing more than unsubstantiated assets (or, in their absence, pyramid schemes), since the joke lies in the willingness to attribute value to something that has little or nothing beyond what people would pay thus. The same description can be applied to tulipomania - a period of speculative furor that occurred in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century - to the Great Bubble of the South Seas and to the Internet bubble. "
Some people do not stop crossing their fingers for speculative purposes, thinking only about making a profit; Others, on the contrary, introduce some money into these phenomena to avoid the risk of being lost ... But these coins are not real! "
Asked whether Bitcoin's use of payments qualifies as money in a common transaction, Marks continued to raise doubts about the market's prospects in the event that growing optimism among viewers began to decline. Howard added:
"Things are likely to go well while the times are favorable, but what will happen to Bitcoin's price and liquidity if in a crisis people decide they prefer to have dollars or another?"
Later, Marks spoke about recent developments around digital currencies, projecting the context to the international market. The businessman wanted to emphasize that he does not mean that the criptomonedas will be worthless or that stock prices are too high today, but the market is, right now, in a precarious state.
Notably, Marks is not the only Wall Street player to be skeptical about digital currencies. Large banks such as Morgan Stanley have recognized the use of Bitcoin as an asset for value retention, but refuse to rate it as a real currency.