Hedge fund manager Michael Burry, famous for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, has confirmed that he has not sold cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, despite speculation he may have. His confirmation came after he recently asked how to short crypto.
Michael Burry says he doesn’t run cryptocurrencies
Renowned investor and founder of private investment firm Scion Asset Management, Michael Burry, confirmed to CNBC on Friday that he had not sold bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Burry is best known for being the first investor to foresee and profit from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010. He is featured in “The Big Short,” a book by Michael Lewis on the mortgage crisis, which was made into a movie starring Christian Bale.
He told CNBC Friday:
I’ve not been shorting cryptocurrencies at all. And I’m not now… I believe cryptocurrencies are in a bubble and most don’t fully understand it.
Many people in the crypto community believed that Burry shorted bitcoin when the price of the cryptocurrency was $30K after he posted a BTC price chart suggesting that it would be a good time to short. Burry has never confirmed or denied if he shorted bitcoin until now.
The crypto community became even more convinced that Burry was shorting bitcoin or was considering doing so when he tweeted Wednesday:
Ok i have never done this before, how do you run cryptocurrency? Do you have to guarantee a loan? Is there a short discount? Can the position be tightened and recalled? In such volatile situations, I tend to think it’s best not to short, but I’m thinking out loud here.
When Burry tweeted about cryptocurrency brokerage on Wednesday, the price of bitcoin was around $ 58,000. It then shot up past $62K. At the time of writing, the price of BTC is $61,011 based on data from Bitcoin.com Markets.
The comments flooded Twitter in response to his tweet about the cryptocurrency shorting, with many people laughing at his knowledge of crypto. Burry deleted the tweet about five minutes after posting it. While the Big Short investor routinely deleted his tweets, it was not usually minutes after posting them. He then deleted his entire Twitter account on Friday, leading some people to suspect that he had quit Twitter due to responses he received from his crypto tweet.
Trader Scott Melker, aka “The Wolf of All Streets,” commented: “Let me get this right. Michael Burry of ‘Big Short’ fame asked how to shorten bitcoin, got destroyed by crypto Twitter, then quit Twitter completely because he couldn’t handle the responses?
Burry also recently criticized the shiba inu (SHIB) token after the price of the coin soared 230%.
