Billionaire Investor Ken Griffin Worried About ‘Twenties to 40-Year-Olds Too Involved in Crypto’ and FTX’s Confidence-Destroying Blast
The the collapse of FTX potentially impacting hundreds of thousands of investors, many of whom are Gen Zers. And Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel hedge fundsays he’s worried about the knock-on effect that could put generations off investing for a while.
“FTX is one of the absolute farces in the history of financial markets,” Griffin said at Bloomberg New Economic Forum in Singapore on Tuesday. “People are going to lose billions of dollars and that erodes confidence in all of the financial markets.”
The loss of confidence in the financial system could put a generation at risk of not having enough savings for retirement—and perhaps affect the recovery from recent market crashes.
Griffin hypothesizes that because they are burned by large investments in cryptocurrencies, young people may be wary of traditional investments like stocks, bonds, and debt. And that hesitation is where the trouble can lie.
“The bottom line is, U.S. investors have been really hurt here by the hundreds of billions of dollars in crypto and market capitalization declines over the past two years,” he said. “I mean, that really hits the whole core of what investor protection is all about.”
Griffin also lashed out at government regulators for their “war for territory” over the crypto market, saying that unnamed agencies “dance around who owns what and Who”.
Whether it’s continuing to invest in Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies or in more traditional vehicles, Griffin said the key at this point is regaining investor confidence.
“A generation of confidence in financial markets has been shaken,” he said. save for their retirement and if they don’t believe or don’t trust the financial markets, then this is a big problem… They need to own stocks… They need to participate in our global capital markets.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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