Ray Dalio critiques Bitcoin's safe-haven status, favors gold

Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio publicly argued May 11 that Bitcoin is a poor safe-haven compared with gold, stressing three institutional constraints: lack of privacy, strong correlation with tech stocks (acting like a risk-on asset), and limited market size. He highlighted Q1 2026’s 20% Bitcoin drawdown versus flat gold and noted Bitcoin’s ~$1.2 trillion market cap vs. gold’s roughly $15 trillion, saying sovereign reserve managers couldn’t realistically deploy large positions in BTC. The critique could curb prospects for broad central-bank or sovereign adoption, reinforcing gold’s role in reserves and possibly capping institutional inflows into Bitcoin until structural issues (privacy, liquidity, correlation) change.