Bitcoin and other private cryptos are 'a road to financial disaster,' investment manager says

Niels Jensen, managing partner and chief investment officer of Absolute Return Partners, believes that private cryptocurrencies are "a road to financial disaster," saying he prefers central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, as a better long-term bet.He argued CBDCs offered a better way forward than Bitcoin or other private cryptos because government-sponsored cryptocurrencies would offer a more stable way to store value.Jensen's commentary plays into a long-running debate about the value of CBDCs, with high-ranking members of the U.S. Federal Reserve questioning the wisdom of the move, even while countries like China rush to adopt their own digital currencies.In his fund letter issued this week, Jensen pointed to the extreme volatility seen in prices for Bitcoin (BTC-USD), Ethereum (ETH-USD) and other cryptos as evidence for his position."Privately issued cryptocurrencies should never be accepted as a medium of exchange," he said.To underline his argument, Jensen spotlighted statistics indicating that Bitcoin prices were