Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller says he owns bitcoin as a 'sort of a plaything' - and millennials look at it the way he views gold

• Stanley Druckenmiller said he owns bitcoin as a "sort of a plaything" but he isn't sure if he believes in it.
• "It could be a new asset class. The answer is I don't know," he said in a Goldman Sachs webcast.
• Druckenmiller said younger millennials look at bitcoin the way he used to look at gold.

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US billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller says he owns some bitcoin, and it may well be a new asset class.

"I do own some of it," he said in a recent episode of Talks with Goldman Sachs. "It's gone up a lot since I bought it. It's just sort of a plaything. I don't really believe in it. I don't really not believe in it. It could be a new asset class. The answer is - I don't know."

Bitcoin rose 13% to a record high on Monday after Tesla disclosed that it spent $1.5 billion to buy the popular cryptocurrency. The token was last trading around $43,725.51, smashing its previous all-time high near $41,000 set in January. Tesla's purchase is expected to create a ripple effect across corporations around the globe and add momentum to its shares as more investors start to factor in its crypto exposure as part of its overall valuation, according to analysts at Wedbush.

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Druckenmiller, chairman of the Duquesne Family Office, said he didn't think bitcoin would be trading as high as it is if the central bank weren't pumping record amounts of money into the economy to stop it collapsing.

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Although he was skeptical of it at first, he said bitcoin advocates have done an "unbelievable marketing job."

"It's been around 13 years," he said. "And particularly, younger millennials look at it the way I've always looked at gold." Druckenmiller said he does doubt whether bitcoin can act as anything other than a store of value. He cited volatility, an immense amount of energy used in its generation, and other complex technical problems as shortcomings.

However, he has previously said that owning bitcoin is a good hedge against inflationary pressure.

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