TL;DR Breakdown:
- Kevin O’Leary wants to raise his crypto holdings to seven percent of his portfolio later this year.
- He believes trillions of dollars will flow into the crypto market if regulators recognize crypto as an institutional-grade asset.
While speaking with CNBC on Monday, the chairman of O’Shares ETFs, Kevin O’Leary, mentioned that there are “trillions of dollars of interest waiting to come on board” if regulators would recognize and regulate crypto as institutional-grade assets. According to him, there are US Investors pending moves to cryptocurrency because the regulators are yet to provide regulations for the emerging asset.
“I don’t want to get involved in crypto if the regulator says it’s not okay. […] I can’t afford to be offside, I cannot afford to be non-compliant,” Kevin O’Leary said.
Kevin O’Leary wants to double his crypto portfolio
It remains unknown when the US regulators will finally introduce regulatory guidelines for the cryptocurrency market. However, “trillions of dollars” are waiting to pour into the market when the regulators finally recognize crypto as an institutional asset class, including the approval of bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds, according to Kevin O’Leary.
In anticipation of this, the O’Shares ETFs chairman is bullish on crypto, and he’s looking to double his crypto holdings later this year. “I want to raise my exposure to crypto — currently at 3% — to 7% by the end of the year.”
Bitcoin critic turned investor
Interestingly, Kevin O’Leary was once a Bitcoin critic who argued that the cryptocurrency was useless. Two years ago, he said that Bitcoin was garbage because investors couldn’t get in and out of it in large amounts. This is untrue for Bitcoin, as investors are able to move millions of dollars in BTC for low fees, compared to the traditional means of payment.
Also, there are many institutions holding Bitcoin as part of their reserve. These include MicroStrategy, which recently bought 5,050 BTC, raising its holdings to approximately 114,042 BTC.
