Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, has warned that regulators are severely restricting Bitcoin. In addition, he says: “Even if Bitcoin were to increase by another 2,000%, this is completely irrelevant for institutional customers.”
Kevin O’Leary warns of brutal Bitcoin regulation and says Bitcoin is not an institutional product
Canadian investor and television personality Kevin O’Leary spoke about Bitcoin in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday.
O’Leary was asked if he had changed his mind about Bitcoin by thinking it was “not real currency” to invest in and possibly buy more. “Let me be clear … I’ve been a Kryptonian for years,” replied the Shark Tank star.
He took out his cell phone and said, “Here is my bitcoin wallet. At the time, all you could get was Ethereum, XRP, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Sternlumen, and Bitcoin [cash]. I bought this at the last madness. I invested $ 100 to work here. This morning it is worth $ 52.77 as not all cryptocurrencies are clearly the same. “He explained:
I’m in it because it’s fun, but this is not an institutional product … This entire market is completely irrelevant to institutional clients, even if Bitcoin were to gain another 2,000%.
Affirming that he owns Bitcoin, O’Leary noted, “I use it on the weekends,” but stressed that “you can’t turn this into an escrow product … it’s irrelevant to the financial markets.”
He explained, “The real problem is, when you get into it as a trustee and it gets regulated and it halves or goes to zero, who knows what, you’ve never seen the mother of class actions come from this one. “
O’Leary was asked to comment on how the Dallas Mavericks, Shark Tank colleague Mark Cuban’s professional basketball team, recently started offering goods discounts to customers who pay with Bitcoin. “This is another arena … where you can see the legitimacy of bitcoin from the likes of Mark Cuban, your buddy, who is trying to make this a more relevant part of people’s lives,” the CNBC host said. Cubans also recently said bitcoin was more of a religion than a solution to anything.
“I know Mark pretty well, he was also quoted as saying that he thinks bananas are a bigger common currency and that he is probably right,” said O’Leary, adding:
My whole point for all of us is … whoever monitors and works in the global trillion dollar financial services industry, is that a no-nonsense burger? It’s not even a unicellular amoeba.
The Shark Tank investor continued, “Financial markets are concerned with regulators, and you can only operate within the confines of these rules and if we glorify such a thing [bitcoin]It really has nothing to do with the financial markets that make the whole world work. And no institutional sovereign wealth fund investor I’ve ever spoken to has told me to index all cryptocurrencies for me. “
O’Leary claimed that the institutional investors he spoke to do not want to own Bitcoin because “they fear the regulator”:
Watch what happens one day and I’ll wait for this one. I’m waiting for the day when one of those regulators puts a heavy load on Bitcoin. Adult men will cry when that happens. You will never experience such a loss of capital in your life. It will be brutal. And I’m just saying that you need to prepare for this.
Meanwhile, more and more institutional investors are investing in Bitcoin. Bitgo recently said there is “unprecedented institutional interest” and Skybridge Capital has launched a Bitcoin fund that is expecting an “avalanche of institutional investors.” More and more banks are also offering crypto services to institutional customers, for example the Standard Chartered Bank. In terms of regulation, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) recently proposed new rules for cryptocurrency wallets.
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