Dalio Backs Gold and Bitcoin as US Debt Risks Mount; BTC Eyes $126K

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio is urging investors to favor gold and "a bit of Bitcoin" over bonds, warning that the United States could face a debt crisis within the next three years. Speaking on Friday, the Bridgewater Associates founder suggested allocating 10% to 15% of portfolios to gold to reduce risk while overweighting gold and Bitcoin relative to debt assets. Dalio pointed to mounting political and geopolitical tensions as drivers of his caution, noting that without policy changes, a debt crisis could emerge in roughly three years. While historically skeptical of Bitcoin as a store of value and critical of its privacy and quantum computing vulnerabilities, Dalio's latest remarks reflect a continued gradual acceptance of BTC as a portfolio hedge, following his 2022 statement that a 1% to 2% Bitcoin allocation was "reasonable."

Standard Chartered may need to revise its year-end Bitcoin forecast higher, according to Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital asset research. In a Friday note, Kendrick said BTC could move toward its all-time high of $126,000 before year's end, with the recovery potentially accelerating after October 6. He attributed the latest rally largely to short liquidations and a recovery in inflows into spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, noting that low open interest could allow more investors to re-enter as prices rise. "For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast (of USD100k) is too low," Kendrick wrote, after the bank had cut its target to $100,000 from $150,000 in February.

MANTRA's native token sank 18.5% from its 24-hour high to a record low shortly before the MANTRA Chain blockchain stopped producing blocks. The team announced a precautionary halt to investigate an unexplained incident, though the chain's underlying infrastructure and validator operations remained the focus of the investigation. The OM token's sharp decline marks one of the steepest drops among major altcoins this week, drawing attention to operational risks across emerging Layer-1 networks. Further updates on the cause of the outage and any remediation steps are expected from the MANTRA team in the coming days.