“Bitcoin will become worthless or illegal”

The CEO of the brokerage company Interactive Brokers believes that bitcoin will become useless or the first cryptocurrency will be outlawed by American regulators due to rising inflation in the United States.

Thomas Peterffy (Thomas Peterffy) in an interview with Forbes shared his opinion on how the growth of inflation can affect bitcoin. Now the inflation rate in the United States has risen to 9.1%, reaching a maximum in the last 40 years. Inflationary pressures will continue for several more years, as this is not a short-term problem, Peterfi believes. He cited several reasons why inflation would not go away: chronic budget deficits lasting decades; constant disruptions in supply chains; lack of qualified employees and increased production costs. As interest rates increase, the Federal Reserve System (FRS) will also increase the amount of service to the US national debt, Peterffy is sure.

Earlier, the businessman recommended investors to keep 2-3% of their portfolio in digital assets in order to insure against the fall in fiat currencies. Now, against the backdrop of the downturn in the crypto market and the liquidity crisis that shook the industry, Peterfi feels less confident.

According to him, there is a very high probability that bitcoin will become worthless or declared “outlawed”. The U.S. government may ban cryptocurrencies for fear that they are being used to fund illegal activities, tax evasion, and the Treasury Department’s inability to monitor transactions with crypto assets. At the same time, Peterfi admitted that he himself owns some bitcoins, and he will buy them even more if the BTC rate drops to $ 12,000. Bitcoin is now trading at $20,000 per coin.

Recall that in 2017, Interactive Brokers allowed customers to open short positions in bitcoin futures, and last year concluded an agreement with Paxos so that customers could trade and store on the BTC, ETH, LTC and BCH platform.