UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, isn’t prepared to make portfolio allocations to bitcoin because of a lack of government oversight, the bank’s chief investment officer said. Bitcoin has also not reached the critical mass to be considered a viable currency to invest in, UBS’s Mark Haefele said .
Bitcoin has split investors over the viability of the volatile cryptocurrency and UBS is among its critics. Bitcoin capped a resurgent week by climbing within a few dollars of a record $8,000 on Friday.
“All it would take would be one terrorist incident in the U.S. funded by bitcoin for the US regulator to much more seriously step in and take action, he said. “That’s a risk, an unquantifiable risk, bitcoin has that another currency doesn’t.”.
UBS chairman Axel Weber this month said bitcoin was a speculative investment and not a store of value, while Credit Suisse Group AG CEO Tidjane Thiam described the speculation around bitcoin as the “very definition of a bubble”. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has called bitcoin “a fraud” that will eventually blow up.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/ubs-says-it-will-not-make-bitcoin-a-portfolio-allocation-1.3295749
