Billionaire investor Mike Novogratz says bitcoin’s value is a social construct and it would be worth less if governments weren’t printing money like ’toilet paper’

• In a live stream on Wednesday, Mike Novogratz said the true value of the cryptocurrency lies mainly in the community it has built.
• "The value of bitcoin isn't the bitcoin code. It's this social construct. It's valuable because we say it's valuable," he said. "It's crazy."
• He also said bitcoin is more valuable because governments are printing money like "toilet paper."
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Billionaire investor and long-time cryptocurrency bull Mike Novogratz said the true value of the bitcoin lies mainly in the community it has built, and that it is valuable because people say it is.

Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital in a live stream with rapper Logic on Wednesday touted the technology underpinning bitcoin but said this would be worthless if no one believed in its potential.

"The value of bitcoin isn't the bitcoin code. It's this social construct. It's valuable because we say it's valuable," he said. "It's crazy."

Novogratz, whose firm offers cryptocurrency-focused services to investors, said many people have come up to him asking him if he is the CEO of bitcoin. But the billionaire said he just sees bitcoin's potential, and name dropped other big names backing the cryptocurrency such as MicroStrategy's CEO Michael Saylor.

"The one thing to remember about the technology, which was cool, is it was the first digital signature you couldn't counterfeit," he said. "And so that meant we could have digital money because it could be scarce. If I said they're 21 million, they're only 21 million cause you can't counterfeit."

He described this as a "profound concept," highlighting the limited supply of the cryptocurrency.

"You say, well, sounds like a Ponzi, but everything that's valuable is some form of a Ponzi. It's valuable because we bring more people in to buy it," he said. "It wouldn't be so valuable if our governments weren't...just printing the money like it's toilet paper."

Bitcoin has been trading sideways following the massive crash in May but reclaimed $40,000 this week. Last month's massive selloff slashed bitcoin's market capitalization by almost 30% to $766 billion.

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