(Bloomberg) -- Bruce Flatt, chief executive officer of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., says bitcoin has no intrinsic value and doesn't interest Canada's largest alternative asset manager.
Brookfield's definition of “intrinsic value” is based on an asset's cash flow or the ability to convert the asset into a cash-flow stream, Flatt said.
“There are some assets in the world that don't fit that characteristic,” Flatt said in an interview Monday with Bloomberg News in Abu Dhabi. “We don't qualify them as assets. Therefore, bitcoin would be one of those."
Futures on the world's most popular cryptocurrency surged as much as 26 percent in their debut session on Cboe Global Markets Inc.'s exchange, triggering two temporary trading halts designed to calm the market. Bitcoin traded at $16,450 at 8:25 a.m. in New York.
“It has no intrinsic value,” Flatt said. “I don't know what it is. But it has no intrinsic value in our definition of intrinsic value. If someone else wants to speculate on it or invest in it, it's for them. It's not for us."
To contact the reporters on this story: Scott Deveau in New York at sdeveau2@bloomberg.net, Erik Schatzker in New York at eschatzker@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, David Scanlan, Jacqueline Thorpe
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