Legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones has reaffirmed his affinity for the world’s largest and oldest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, as geopolitical tensions and the likelihood of a recession increase.

Israel-Palestine Conflict Makes Bitcoin A Good Bet

During a Tuesday interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, macro investor Paul Tudor Jones noted that the soaring U.S. government debt coupled with geopolitical instability — with the Israel-Gaza war — makes it extremely challenging to own stocks. “This might be the most threatening geopolitical environment I’ve ever seen,” Jones posited. He favors Bitcoin and traditional safe haven asset gold as he anticipates economic trouble ahead that could send stocks into a steep crash.

Speaking on the U.S.’s fiscal situation, the hedge fund billionaire said it’s currently the weakest since World War II:

“As interest costs go up in the United States, you get in this vicious circle, where higher interest rates cause higher funding costs, cause higher debt issuance, which cause further bond liquidation, which cause higher rates, which put us in an untenable fiscal position.”

Jones predicts that a recession will probably happen during the first quarter of 2024 due to the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance and the skyrocketing yields on long-term U.S. Treasury bonds. “So, yes, I like Bitcoin and I like gold right here,” he asserted, adding that both assets should “probably take on a larger percentage of your portfolio than historically they would.”

Paul Tudor Jones’ Bitcoin Journey

Jones first declared his bullish stance on Bitcoin back in May 2020, revealing at the time that he had bet 1%-2% of his assets on the premier crypto.

“Bitcoin is math, and math has been around for thousands of years,” he stated back in 2021. Around the same time, he also said he wanted an allocation to BTC of 5% as he deemed the crypto a “bet on certainty amid uncertain economic conditions.”​

But, Jones tempered his enthusiasm by voicing concerns about the unfriendly regulatory environment in the U.S., noting, “Bitcoin has a real problem in the United States; you have the entire regulatory apparatus against it,” the billionaire American investor told CNBC’s Squawk Box earlier this year.