Ray Dalio: Bitcoin's transparency is exactly why central banks won't hold it!

Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager who allocates roughly 1% of his own portfolio to bitcoin, has put a sharp point on why central banks are unlikely to ever hold BTC as a reserve asset: the blockchain's full transparency works against it. "Bitcoin lacks privacy. Transactions can be monitored and potentially controlled, which is why central banks aren't looking to hold it," he wrote on X.

The argument cuts to a structural tension Bitcoin supporters rarely dwell on. Every transaction is permanently visible on a public ledger — blockchain analytics firms and law enforcement can already trace fund flows and link activity to institutions. For a central bank quietly accumulating a reserve position, that real-time visibility is a dealbreaker, not a feature.

Dalio's second concern is correlation. The 90-day correlation coefficient between BTC and the Nasdaq currently sits at 0.89,…