‘Bitcoin Replaced Gold’ Reports Virgin Galactic Chairman

At the Delivering Alpha Conference, CNBC caught up to Virgin Galactic’s chairman and CEO of Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, who had a lot to say about Bitcoin investments. By his estimation, Bitcoin has effectively replaced gold and will continue to grow.

The American spaceflight company founded by billionaire Richard Branson is as forward-thinking as it gets. But, with the kind of forward-thinking that it takes to set space travel as a goal, it needs forward-thinking leaders like Chamath Palihapitiya at the helm. This electrical engineer graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1999 and has gone on to work for AOL and Facebook until forming Social Capital.

Quite an impressive resume and a man worth listening to, he had some great things to say about Bitcoin:

“It’s very hard for me sitting here to give you a price prediction, but I can pretty confidently say that Bitcoin, I think, has effectively replaced gold. And it will continue to do so. And so that market cap is just going to grow.” Chamath Palihapitiya

That’s a bold statement. Yet, it does appear to be true. But, on the other hand, you don’t want to give up on gold necessarily. Just because the future has arrived with a phenomenal cryptocurrency that dominates the digital currency world doesn’t mean it’s valueless.

That wasn’t the only thing Palihapitiya had to talk about in the interview, either. He went on to talk about Bitcoin’s security in the future. When asked if the government could kill Bitcoin as some people have speculated because of its success:

“I think it’s very hard to kill. Technically, it’s very difficult. Just the way that it’s architected, it is the most profound iteration of the internet that we’ve seen.”

At a time when AOL was the hot thing, Palihapitiya worked there. When Facebook was the next best thing, Palihapitiya worked there. The Chairman of Virgin Galactic and founder of Social Capital, Palihapitiya has always positioned himself in the right place at the right time. Right now, he’s sure of his future with Bitcoin.

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