Kevin O’Leary believes investors will watch out for regulatory compliance before they decide to invest big money into Bitcoin mining.
O’Leary, 67 and born in Canada, has made a career out of investing. But it’s not just his job, it’s his persona. He’s “Mr. Wonderful”. He’s a shark who invests in cupcake companies. He’s the guy who calls it as he sees it: Investments either win or lose. It’s that “binary.”
Yet, when it comes to crypto, O’Leary is an advocate for diversification. He says his largest holding today is ETH, the native currency of the Ethereum network, and he has also bought BTC, SOL, MATIC, and 28 other coins. Likewise, seeing crypto exchanges as potentially lucrative, he sees a world where both decentralized and centralized exchanges can win.
Last week, his decentralized finance play, WonderFi, bought a regulated Canadian exchange in a cash and stock deal.
Kevin O’Leary, the popular Shark Tank investor, and known crypto optimist, strongly believes that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would be much bigger than Bitcoin. O’Leary, who’s chairman of O’Shares Investment Advisers, in an interview mentioned that the NFT trend will favor the fluid market, as compared to real estate taxes and insurance policies for the next few years. The Canadian TV personality’s comments marked a U-turn instance as he was earlier quoted to have stated that no crypto-asset stood a chance against Bitcoin.
“You’re going to see a lot of movement in terms of doing authentication and insurance policies and real estate transfer taxes all online over the next few years, making NFTs a much bigger, more fluid market potentially than just Bitcoin alone,” O’Leary said in an interview with CNBC. He also added that he is “investing on both sides of that equation” regardless of which of the two comes out on top.
O’Leary noted that he has faith in the growth of NFTs because they allow people to prove ownership to real-world properties. With more and more companies hopping onto the hype train, NFTs have become preferable options for a lot of people, when compared to physical records.
NFTs are one-of-a-kind crypto tokens that serve to track the provenance and authenticity of rare virtual collectible items such as art and sports memorabilia. There have also been efforts to bring NFTs to physical assets.
“You’re going to see a lot of movement in terms of doing authentication and insurance policies and real estate transfer taxes all online over the next few years, making NFTs a much bigger, more fluid market potentially than just bitcoin alone,” O’Leary told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” Wednesday.
“We’ll see what happens but I’m making that bet and I’m investing on both sides of that equation.”
Barely anyone had heard of NFTs in 2020, but they became a huge phenomenon the following year. More than $20 billion worth of the tokens changed hands throughout 2021, according to some estimates. The trend gained particular public attention after a collage by the digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was sold for a record $69 million.
However, there are concerns about the sustainability of the market. Some have compared it to the initial coin offering frenzy of 2017, which saw several investors get defrauded by betting on start-ups through unregulated token sales. Meanwhile, there have been a number of scams and instances of stolen art, raising red flags for some traders.
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