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Speaking to Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano, the Shark Tank star said that DeFi will play a key role in the future of crypto and that he is deeply interested in the space.
The revelations were made in Pomp’s May 24 Bitcoin podcast and were picked up by mainstream media highlighting that another investment heavyweight has turned to crypto assets.
Canadian startup DeFi Ventures is the firm that O’Leary intends to launch having led a $20 million fundraising round for the company, which has yet to go live.
The entrepreneur stated that DeFi interests him the most right now, adding:
“There must be millions of people who have a little bit of coin who want to make some 4%, 5%, 6% on it,”
Big Bucks Behind DeFi
According to a Markets Insider report, the startup is working to find a commercial solution to DeFi investing, enabling anyone who has a wallet to wrap their assets and utilize DeFi’s benefits automatically and in a compliant way.
The Shark Tank “shark”, whose nickname is Mr. Wonderful, is clearly very confident about the future of decentralized finance. His reported portfolio allocation to crypto assets is 3%, but this could grow as DeFi plays a larger part.
“I am going to rename it to WonderFi because it is going to be my vehicle and I think it’s just the beginning of some great things to come,”
The investor added that Bitcoin’s recent volatility and declines have actually boosted his DeFi investments and driven up profits.
“We’ve had tremendous volatility on bitcoin these last ten days. That actually enhances DeFi, it makes it better. I’m making way more on my contracts now,”
Regulatory pressure on centralized exchanges in the U.S. and Chinese regime crackdowns on Bitcoin mining is likely to be beneficial to DeFi and proof-of-stake blockchains.
O’Leary did acknowledge the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) concerns regarding crypto assets, but that hasn’t deterred him from going long on Bitcoin, he stated.
TVL Update
At the time of press, the total value locked across the DeFi ecosystem was $63 billion according to DeFipulse, with Dappradar reporting a higher figure of $71 billion.
There has been a measured recovery since the local market bottom on May 24 as cryptocurrency prices have bounced a little since then. MakerDAO is the leading DeFi protocol according to both websites with a TVL of just under $10 billion.