World’s Safest Money Could Go to Zero: Should Bitcoin Investors Worry?
Norway’s $2 trillion wealth fund may at some point be value nothing. The warning got here from Nicolai Tangen, the fund’s personal CEO, on Tuesday.
Tangen spoke at a political convention in Arendal, southern Norway. Markets hold climbing regardless of mounting dangers, he mentioned, and known as that irregular.
Norway Wealth Fund CEO Puts a Total Wipeout on the Table
The fund is Norway’s nationwide nest egg, lengthy seen as one of many most secure swimming pools of cash in world markets. It invests the nation’s oil and gasoline earnings in shares, bonds, and property overseas.
On common, it owns 1.5% of each listed firm on Earth, in accordance to Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which runs it.
The fund crossed $1 trillion in 2017, a milestone pushed by rising world inventory markets and the strengthening of main currencies towards the US greenback.
It has doubled since, now protecting a few quarter of Norway’s public spending, up from roughly 10% a decade in the past.
Tangen ran a London hedge fund, AKO Capital, earlier than taking cost in 2020. He is aware of how fortunes vanish. He framed Tuesday’s situation as preparation, not prediction. Still, he refused to soften the reply.
“I need to contribute to our psychological emergency preparedness by asking the query: ‘can the oil fund disappear?’ The reply to that query is ‘sure’ and the worst is that on the earth we reside in now, it isn’t utterly inconceivable,” Tangen mentioned in remarks reported by Reuters.
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Echoes of 1929 While Markets Price In Nothing But Good News
The fund’s personal numbers clarify the unease. Stocks made up 71.3% of it on the finish of 2025, per its annual report. It gained 15.1% that yr.
However, the primary quarter of 2026 was within the pink. Falling US tech giants dragged it down 1.9%, the fund mentioned in its first-quarter replace.
NBIM’s personal stress assessments add enamel. Its newest annual report fashions a “fragmented world” of tariffs and rival commerce blocs. That situation alone erases 37% of the fund’s worth, roughly $740 billion. An AI correction sits on the identical record.
History provides the darker math. Tangen pointed to the run-up to the 1929 crash, together with tariffs. US shares misplaced practically 90% between 1929 and 1932. In distinction, the fund’s roughest latest yr, 2022, price it simply 14.1%.
The timing provides the warning its chew. It landed the identical day Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index dealt retail merchants their worst crash since 2008. A day earlier, knowledge confirmed hedging demand collapsing at the same time as banks raised S&P 500 targets.
Meanwhile, a rising refrain calls AI focus the biggest market risk.
Still, Tangen conceded the bulls have some extent. Companies rebuilt provide chains. Moreover, the financial system retains absorbing shocks that after would have damaged it.
“If you had been going again two years, for those who had predicted tariffs, commerce boundaries, you wouldn’t have anticipated the market and the financial system to be as robust as it’s. So it’s a resilient financial system.”
Should Bitcoin Investors Worry?
The fund doesn’t purchase Bitcoin straight. However, it holds oblique publicity to Bitcoin (BTC) by means of fairness stakes in corporations that maintain BTC on their steadiness sheets. That stake jumped 83% from the yr to mid-2025.
The channel issues in a crash. Bitcoin trades near $63,277, down 1.2% prior to now 24 hours. In broad selloffs, it has tended to fall alongside the identical tech shares that dragged the fund down within the first quarter.
So the trustworthy reply is not any, not due to one speech. Tangen predicted nothing. The fear case is the setup he described. Stretched valuations, tariffs, and complacency threaten each threat asset, and Bitcoin sits high on that record.
The pressure in his message is the actual story. The steward of the world’s largest fortune is war-gaming a complete loss whereas markets sit close to document highs.
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