Former Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager and cryptocurrency bull Raoul Pal claimed in a tweet that he now only owns a single Bitcoin.
As the claim was made in the heat of a Twitter fight with self-proclaimed “Bitcoin Strategist” Greg Foss it’s not entirely clear whether it’s an exaggeration or an accurate statement about his holdings. Pal is the founder and CEO of Real Vision and Global Macro while Foss is an executive director at Validus Power Corp.
The revelation of his apparently small holding certainly caused uproar and angst among Bitcoin true believers, who’ve looked at Pal askance ever since he started calling Ethereum “the greatest trade” and predicted that ETH and altcoins will eventually outperform BTC.
Fascinating to see that since inception ETH has outperformed BTC by 250%. It only fell below its initial price in BTC for the first 5 months of its existence in 2015.
Let that put rest to the idea that all other tokens trend towards zero in BTC terms. pic.twitter.com/ulCpsjG8up
— Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) April 7, 2021
Pal first purchased BTC in Nov 2013. He sold for a 10X profit in the so-called “fork-wars” of 2017 (missing out on an even bigger gain later that year) before adding to his collection in 2019 through 2020. In May 2021, he confirmed that he owned more ETH than BTC. At time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is worth $40,925.
The barney was instigated by Foss, who tweeted “Raoul is soft” followed by another intellectual tweet, “Raoul sucks and blows” shortly after. After some back and forth between Pal and the Bitcoin maxi, Pal posted that people like Foss and the Bitcoin community’s exclusionary ideology are why he only holds one Bitcoin.
And that is your issue. I don’t share your philosophy, so you attack me? Really? This is why I hold only one bitcoin, the community has lost sight of inclusion and you sir, are helping reduce the network effects by excluding people who dont share your view from the network.
— Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) January 20, 2022
This upset the Bitcoiner community, many who claimed he had let emotion cloud logic. “His feelings are hurting his future,” commented one user Emanuel in a reply to Bitcoin Meme Hub tweet. “I knew when he started to sip Vitalik’s coolaid he was a goner,” added another user, Jalan Foster.
The founder of Synaptic Ventures Marc van der Chijs complained that the fact Pal only owns one BTC based on the makeup of the community and not on the potential return “goes totally against the gospel he preaches on RealVision.”
However, some defended Pal, pointing to his impressive track record and reminding followers that he is in fact a trader, not a holder. Crypto analyst and founder of Crypto My Way “Coach T” wrote that he appreciates Pal’s “diverse views and intelligent thinking.”
Foss vs. Pal: a Twitter feud
It appears that the argument was in response to a disagreement on Pal’s stance on inflation and bonds as a trading vehicle. Foss explained that he didn’t support Pal promoting his trading strategy to others who don’t entirely understand how it works.
Pal disagreed, explaining that his views on bonds are “a trade, not a philosophy.” Despite this, in a following comment on the thread, Pal claimed that he doesn’t own any bonds.
Ok, lets do math. If Im right and bonds can rally 20% in 12 months (just use TLT) that is faster than the balance sheet expansion, thus its a net win to your purchasing power. If you hold bonds to maturity you lose. Issue?
— Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) January 20, 2022
Three hours after posting the original tweet attacking Pal, the argument eventually culminated in Foss tweeting an apology saying that he “regrets his actions,” adding that he “made a rookie error” and that he has “bigger battles to fight.”
Related: Raoul Pal says ‘reasonable chance’ crypto market cap could 100x by 2030
Just weeks ago, Pal said that he believes there is a “reasonable chance” that the crypto market capitalization will increase 100 times by the end of this decade. Hoping he’s right about that is perhaps something on which we can all agree.
Cointelegraph reached out to Raoul Pal via Real Vision and will update the story with any response.