Chamath Palihapitiya, the billionaire chairman of spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, has recommended that everyone hold Bitcoin (BTC) as a form of crisis insurance.

Speaking on CNBC'due south Squawk Box, Palihapitiya said he believes that "everybody should probably accept ane% of their assets in Bitcoin."

Palihapitiya said that Bitcoin comprises a "fantastic hedge," as every other financial instrument is correlated [...] except Bitcoin, which is fundamentally uncorrelated."

"When you see the corporeality of leverage the financial industry is running, and yous retrieve almost all these dislocations and all these exogenous things that are happening that y'all can't predict, in that location's a lot of risk to the downside, and it will exist great that an average private citizen, of whatsoever land in the world, has an uncorrelated hedge."

Palihapitiya dismisses coronavirus equally bull catalyst

Yet the billionaire former Facebook executive rejects the theory that economic woes resulting from the coronavirus outbreak will bulldoze the crypto markets into a bull trend.

"I don't think when [...] you wake upward and run into a coronavirus scare and the Dow down 2,000, you should not be going in and ownership Bitcoin - that is an idiotic strategy," he said.

The 'Bitcoin is a prophylactic oasis' narrative has certainly taken a battering this week with BTC tumbling upwards to 13% in 36 hours in tandem with the stock markets due to fears over the affect of the coronavirus. In dissimilarity aureate has performed well in its traditional function as a safe haven, gaining 0.5% in recent days to trade for $1,648.82 per ounce.

Put some Bitcoin under your mattress

Palihapitiya suggests that a better approach than trying to profit off brusk term market place trends is for investors to put a small percentage of their net worth into Bitcoin as "insurance".

"I think a reasonable strategy is to say 1% of my net worth should be in something completely uncorrelated to the earth and how the world works. You quietly over some period of fourth dimension accumulate a position and then just never expect at information technology again and hope that that insurance under the mattress never has to come due. But, if information technology does, it will protect y'all."

Palihapitiya is a longtime Bitcoin supporter and his company, Virgin Galactic, began accepting Bitcoin for its $250,000 spaceflights during Nov 2022, condign i of most high-profile companies to accept BTC at the time. Palihapitiya told CNBC that it has received seven,957 "registrations of involvement" since conducting the first flight in December 2022, which equates to to $2.39 billion in potential ticket sales.