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The Shark Tank star, Mr. Wonderful or Kevin O’Leary is a Canadian businessman, and entrepreneur. He initially expressed skepticism of cryptocurrencies. He told CNBC that Bitcoin is “a digital game and useless currency”.
In his recent interview with Kitco, O’Leary said “I have been going back into the crypto marktes lately. Any time Bitcoin drops below $17, 000 I add to our positions there”. Crypto is getting more interesting just because “we’re finally starting to see the bearer of regulation coming into play and I think long-term that’s a good thing.”
In May 2021, O’Leary said in a Podcast that he made a 3 to 5% allocation to Bitcoin. He had become a strategic investor in the decentralized finance platform, WonderFi Technologies. Later in August 2021, it was announced that he would take an ownership stake in Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX to become its spokesperson and ambassador.
But unfortunately O’Leary was sued in a class-action lawsuit in November 2022 for prosecuting individuals promoting FTX.
During the interview, O’Leary shared about the hearings in the senate. He said “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.”
O’Leary further added about the regulation of crypto exchanges. He says the “unregulated crypto exchanges are 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”.
Mr. Wonderful described that “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 did not reveal the name of crypto exchange, but noted that “all the large unregulated exchanges incentivize account holders and users to buy their tokens to get discounts in trading fees.”
After that the exchanges put user’s tokens on their balance sheet at a “ridiculous valuation” and when searched about the ownership “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”, he added.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
