Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary says he’s bullish on crypto

Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary expects a “trillion dollars” more to flow into Bitcoin in the next couple of years. He wants to more than double his cryptocurrency holdings from 3% of his portfolio to 7% by the end-2021. O’Leary also sees cryptocurrencies becoming an institutional asset class.

The “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary talked about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in an interview on CNBC’s Capital Connection, published Monday.

O’Leary, who is also chairman of O’Shares ETFs, had previously called Bitcoin “garbage,” but he seemingly changed his mind.

“I’m bullish on crypto,” O’Leary said, adding that he is also bullish on decentralized finance (DeFi). By his words, he wants to allocate more in his personal portfolio.

“I want to raise my exposure to crypto — currently at 3% — to 7% by the end of the year,” he claimed.

However, O’Leary said investors want US authorities to make decisions about regulating cryptocurrencies. Citing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pushing back against Coinbase’s Lend product, he said: “That’s a slowdown in what is really emerging as a very interesting space.”

The “Shark Tank” investor pointed: “We want the regulator to actually make some decisions about crypto because none of us that are in financial services want to actually be cowboys about this. 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.”

Regarding Bitcoin, O’Leary said: “If the regulator finally allowed financial services companies to call it an asset, put it into an ETF [exchange-traded fund] in the United States, like they have in Canada and other countries, I’d figure there’d be another trillion dollars worth of buying into bitcoin. And we don’t have that yet, but that’s the opportunity.”

He also added: “I think at the end of the day, over the next couple of years, that will happen. That’s why there’s so much interest.”

Finally, O’Leary added that all institutional investors want to know when and how the regulators will get on the side of crypto and when they will consider cryptocurrencies an “institutional asset class.”

Celebrity investor concluded: “We don’t know when, but it is definitely going to come. It’s not going away.”

As previously reported, Bloomberg’s senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone argues that Bitcoin is gradually becoming a global reserve asset that complements the US dollar. He said digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum are on the way to new highs.