Kevin O’Leary: Crypto Needs ‘Panic Event’

Kevin O’Leary, a well-known investor and star of the television show “Shark Tank,” stated that he is not prepared to proclaim a bottom in the cryptocurrency industry unless a significant adverse event takes place.

This week, O’Leary was quoted as saying that “You don’t get a bottom until you have an event.” “In the crypto world, we need someone to go to zero.”

According to O’Leary, even if such instances certainly have a negative impact on the parties involved, they are the “panic events that characterize bottoms” because they cause markets to cave in right before they begin to gently recover after having crawled out from their lows.

O’Leary and Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, are both strategic investors in the company WonderFi, which is a marketplace and registered trading platform for cryptocurrencies.

O’Leary attributes the move to the company’s improved monitoring and compliance, as well as the work it has done with authorities on listing new coins and services. He also links the move to the company’s increased profitability. He stated that the cryptocurrency business in Canada does not permit excessive leverage, which means that WonderFi customers are not as susceptible to margin calls.

According to O’Leary, individual investors, family offices, and institutions “need to know with certainty that they’re not trading on a rogue platform.” It is essential to have an “infrastructure that is fully compatible.”

O’Leary is of the opinion that other international jurisdictions have taken note of Canada’s crypto policy, as they should. When O’Leary walked into the room with a Canadian flag draped over his shoulder and began speaking about compliant cryptography, he found that people paid attention.
In reference to the most recent downturn in the market, O’Leary stated that the volatility has been beneficial for WonderFi and has increased the amount of trading activity.

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Adoption and governing guidelines

Further regulation is required for wider institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies, as institutions need to be able to get exposure to cryptocurrencies in the same way that they would gain exposure to equities and bonds.

O’Leary is of the opinion that stablecoin regulation should be the first step. Given that it is backed by cash and short-term Treasury bills, he pointed out that USDC has maintained its value despite the recent volatility in the cryptocurrency market. According to what he had remarked, “The market is really receptive to something stable as a payment system.”

Additionally, O’Leary considers the regulation of stablecoins to be a non-partisan problem. In his argument, he stated that “Everybody wants to support the default currency, the U.S. dollar.”