Mexican Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Bets 70% of His Portfolio on Bitcoin, Eyes $1 Million Price

Bitcoin Magazine Mexican Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Bets 70% of His Portfolio on Bitcoin, Eyes $1 Million Price Long before bitcoin existed, Ricardo Salinas Pliego was learning about hard money at the family dinner table. Born in Mexico City in 1955, Salinas is the founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, a corporate conglomerate with interests in telecommunications, media, financial services, and retail. In 1987, he took over from his father as CEO of Grupo Elektra — originally a family-owned furniture manufacturing company founded in 1906 by his great-grandfather — and refocused it on appliances, electronics, and consumer credit for Mexico’s emerging middle class. Today, his empire includes Banco Azteca, TV Azteca, and dozens of other enterprises spanning the country. But Salinas’ financial philosophy was shaped well before any of that. He traces his deep belief in fiat devaluation to the era when President Richard Nixon severed the U.S. dollar’s direct convertibility into gold, ending the gold standard. “The conversation at the family table, way back then, with my grandfather and my father was always about gold,” he told CoinDesk in a recent interview , adding that “the famous fiat fraud committed by Richard Nixon” was a constant topic of discussion at home. The Salinas family, long involved in gold and silver mining, had direct skin in the game. Salinas: Bitcoin is unseizable Those early lessons hardened into conviction. Salinas has argued for years that bitcoin is unseizable and can be transferred instantly worldwide — advantages he sees as superior to both fiat money and the gold standard, which he says “has always been subject to governmental intervention.” Salinas didn’t arrive at bitcoin all at once. His bitcoin allocation has grown dramatically — from just 10% of his investment portfolio in 2020 to 70% today , a trajectory that mirrors his deepening conviction in the asset over half a decade. In June 2021, Salinas publicly announced he was working with his bank, Banco Azteca, to make it the first in Mexico to accept bitcoin — a bold move that drew both applause from the crypto community and swift pushback from Mexican financial regulators, who issued warnings about virtual assets. The banking ambitions stalled, but his personal conviction only grew. That same year, his hunger for bitcoin exposure led him into one of the stranger episodes of his financial career. Salinas wanted to put $400 million into bitcoin in 2021 but didn’t have the liquid cash readily available, so he borrowed against his shares in Grupo Elektra — pledging $416 million as collateral for a $150 million loan. His instincts about bitcoin were correct. The only problem was the lender turned out to be a fraud: a firm calling itself Astor Capital Fund, whose CEO “Thomas Astor-Mellon” introduced himself on a video call from what appeared to be a yacht, but was actually a man with prior convictions for forging prescriptions and stealing jewelry. Even that painful episode di