Macro investor Luke Gromen says it US authorities are likely attempting to control the price of Bitcoin (BTC) ahead of the possibility of hyperinflation.
In an interview with Peter McCormack on the What Bitcoin Did podcast, the founder of investment research firm Forest for the Trees says that the US authorities don’t want assets like Bitcoin or gold to go up as it could hurt confidence in their economic policies.
“[US authorities] don’t want things going up that make [them] look bad. If the stock market goes up a ton, there’s not going to be any Americans going, ‘You guys are terrible’. The stock market’s up 100% a year for three years, people will love that. They won’t ask a lot of questions. If Bitcoin goes up 500% a year for three years or if gold goes up 200% a year for three years there start to be more questions.”
Ahead of a possible rise in inflation, Groman says the US may be attempting to curtail the use of crypto in a coordinated attack on digital currencies that many refer to as “Choke Point 2.0,” or a series of unreasonable regulatory enforcement actions on the space.
“They need to inflate away and by delaying the inflating away as much as they already have, they’re increasing the odds they need to do a really compressed period [of inflation]. And then I look at Operation Choke Point 2.0… Gosh, it sure looks like they’re trying to chain the theater doors before they light the joint on fire.
…They are starting to see the inevitability of where policy is going to have to go which is a compressed period of high rates of inflation and I don’t know if that’s 100 (% inflation) or if that’s 20. For me a 100 a year is still a tail risk, but that tail has gotten meaningfully fatter over the last two, three years.
For me, Choke Point 2.0, within this, starts to look like a capital control of an asset class that certain elements of the government would not want going up as a result of what they’re doing or what they’re going to do.”