Venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary is doubling down on crypto markets despite being involved with the collapse of FTX, which he was a paid sponsor of.
In a new interview with Kitco, O’Leary reveals his current strategy for accumulating Bitcoin (), and gives his outlook on the development of regulation in the crypto industry.
“I have been going back into crypto markets lately. Any time Bitcoin drops below $17,000 I add to our positions there. Crypto is getting very interesting because we’re finally starting to see the bearer of regulation coming into play and I think long-term that’s a good thing.
These hearings in the senate have really poked the bears as I like to say. I’ve participated in the last hearings and when I had a chance to talk to the people on the Hill… I sensed they’re frustrated now. They’re tired of putting these hearings on every six months, every time one of these crypto companies blows up and goes to zero.
They’re so unregulated, these unregulated exchanges are just… They’re all going to go zero. And what’s going to come out of it eventually, is a regulated crypto market which I think will be very interesting because there’s real merit… Crypto itself is not the bad guy. Crypto is just software code. It’s not the software code, it’s all these rogue players and these unregulated exchanges and the issuance of all these meritless tokens, the tokens on the exchanges. All of this crap… It’s all going to go away.”
O’Leary says that he takes particular issue with crypto exchanges issuing their own tokens, and says that the practice is shrouded in a lack of transparency.
“We don’t even have to mention what exchange but, all the large unregulated global exchanges incentivize account holders and users to buy their tokens to get discounts on trading fees. It’s not new, it’s been going on for years. And then they put them on their balance sheet at a ridiculous valuation. And if you look at who actually owns these things, 97% of them are owned by the issuer, and you don’t know who that person is because it’s simply a wallet without a name on it, and the other 3% are valuing it at $60, $70, $80, $90, $100 billion.
If there’s a cash run, a cash call back to fiat, back to US dollars on $100 billion, you know that exchange is going to fail, and that’s exactly what happened to FTX…”
