The billionaire hedge fund manager (pictured above) also said it was an excellent hedge against inflation.

Paul Tudor Jones made a splash in May when he disclosed a bitcoin investment and called the cryptocurrency the fastest horse in the race against inflation. On Thursday, he was on CNBC’s Squawk Box, and this time, he said bitcoin was similar to an investment in a tech startup. (CNBC)

Inflation will rear its head, and tech is the name of the game

Jones said in the interview that he recommended bitcoin because it was a typical inflation trade such as gold, copper, TIPS breakevens, and being long yield curve.

“I came to the conclusion that bitcoin was going to be the best inflation trade,” he said.

Bitcoin has certainly been bullish in recent months and this week was propelled higher by PayPal’s (NASDAQ: PYPL) announcement that it would allow cryptocurrencies on its platform.

PayPal is one of the largest fintechs in the world. It has 346 million active accounts globally and processed $ 222 billion in payment transactions during the second quarter of 2020.

Jones said in the interview that investing in bitcoin was like putting money in the large tech companies such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

“Bitcoin has this enormous contingence of really, really smart and sophisticated people who believe in it,” Jones said. “It’s like investing with Steve Jobs and Apple or investing in Google early.”

Bitcoin is currently trading a shade above $ 13,000.

Cash a wasting asset

Back in May, Jones said to CNBC that cash was a “wasting asset” because profligate central banks were erasing the purchasing power of cash by 2% annually.

He was probably prescient.

In recent months, listed companies such as MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) and Square (NYSE: SQ) have invested hundreds of millions of dollars of their treasury reserves into bitcoin in a flight out of the U.S. dollar and cash.

Tailpiece

“I like bitcoin even more now than I did then,” said Jones. “I think we are in the first inning of bitcoin and it’s got a long way to go.”

Related Story:  Paul Tudor Jones to CNBC on Bitcoin: “It’s a Great Speculation”

Image credit: Paul Tudor Jones by Flickr