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Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian investor, best known for being on Television Series Shark Tank, is planning to more than double his crypto investment before the end of the year. He revealed this bullish news during an interview on September 13, saying he wants to raise his exposure to crypto from 3% to 7%. He added that he is bullish on crypto as well as decentralized finance (DeFi).
In the interview, O’Leary said he believes the crypto market can attract investments worth trillions of dollars if it becomes an asset class. However, financial watchdogs must decide on how to regulate crypto before this can happen, according to him. He, specifically, mentioned the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), saying its plan to sue Coinbase if it proceeds to launch its lending service is slowing down an interesting emerging industry.
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O’Leary went on to note that organizations in the financial space want regulators to make some decisions about crypto because none of them want to be cowboys about the matter. He pointed out that he does not want to get involved in crypto if regulators say it is not okay, adding that he cannot afford to be offside or non-compliant.
There’s high demand for Bitcoin (BTC)
While he believes US regulators will eventually recognize cryptocurrencies as an asset class, O’Leary said he is unsure when this will happen. This is because the infrastructure for compliance lacks compared to the systems that handle traditional assets.
According to the Shark Tank star, regulators giving financial companies the green light to consider Bitcoin (BTC/USD) an asset would see at least a trillion dollars flow into the coin. He also said the SEC’s approval of a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) could also help the coin achieve this feat. O’Leary added that there is so much interest in BTC, and it is not going away because it is the new asset class.
This news comes after MicroStrategy purchased an additional 5,050 BTC, showing that the leading cryptocurrency still has high demand among renowned investors. El Salvador also purchased $21 million worth of BTC in the past week after its Bitcoin Law came to effect, making the cryptocurrency legal tender.
Meanwhile, BTC is slowly gaining bullish momentum after plunging from a 90-day high of $52,853.76 in the past week. At the time of writing, the coin is changing hands at $46,515.82 after gaining 5.46% over the past 24 hours.