Crypto Megan Podcast | Is Canada Doomed? Kevin O'Leary on Politics, Bitcoin and a $200K BTC Future

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Welcome to the Crypto Megan podcast. I'm your host, Megan Nielsen. I'm a high-end crypto and NFT portfolio and Web3 strategy consultant. I'm currently on a world tour as a Web3 keynote speaker at all the biggest Web3 tech and fintech events around the world as an industry leader to educate anyone from beginner to C-level executive, and of course, to advocate for women in Web3. My mission is to inspire new people to get involved in the crypto and NFT space with quality, entertaining information they can trust as pioneers in this cultural and financial revolution, a paradigm shift. All right, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Megan Nilsen, aka Crypto Megan, on Tim Draper's Draper TV. I have a very special guest today who needs no intro, both powerhouse force in both traditional finance and the crypto frontier. He's the chairman of O'Leary Ventures and legendary entrepreneur, the sharpest shark on Shark Tank, most would say, and a highly bold and unapologetic voice in both traditional finance and crypto. I'd like to welcome today our esteemed guest, AKA Kevin O'Leary, AKA Mr. Wonderful.

Great to be here. Thank you very much.

Yeah, it's great to have you. I mean, like, wow, I've been watching all these things about you, and, and we're here in Canada on your home turf, and it's been absolutely amazing to see the evolution of everything that's happened now that we have, for the first time in history, a pro-crypto administration.

Yeah, right.

And that is kind of like just set the, the whole industry on fire, uh, in a good way. Um, so there's a lot happening in the macroeconomics But before we get into that, I wanna congratulate you. I know there's been a big transaction with WonderFi and Robinhood. So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, my investment thesis has always been, you know, the analogy that I think is great is the gold rush hundreds of years ago. The guys that really made money owned the jeans, picks, and shovels because they didn't take the risk of finding gold or not. And so when you go into a nascent sector that's growing, you wanna own the infrastructure. And in the case of crypto, it's the exchanges. That's where there's price discovery. That's where there's transactions. It's agnostic to price. You make money selling Bitcoin at any price. And so I invested in all of them, including— I was one of the early shareholders, obviously, in WonderFi, as WonderFi was successful under Dean Serka to consolidate the entire Canadian industry, deal after deal after deal. And it became the behemoth of Canada. on a compliant basis, and the OSC approved all these transactions. And then of course Vlad's leadership in Robinhood in the US. I mean, I'm a huge fan. I'm a shareholder. You know, he's got a vision for an entire North American behemoth, and I'm very excited to be part of it now. And if you— the proposed transaction, I think, creates something unique in North America. So I'm very optimistic. Hopefully regulators will approve it and we'll move forward. But, you know, happy to be part of it.

Oh yeah. I mean, it's a big move here in the crypto world, and I'm sure it's going to be a lot to read on the follow-up of that news. But getting into more of the macroeconomic sphere and what I was saying about having the first pro-crypto administration, it's kind of polemic. It's caused a lot of stir of emotions among many people. I would say that in the crypto world, we're highly kind of single-issue voters, right? We just want to get pro-regulation, sensible regulation. A lot of people are upset at a lot of the things that are happening that Trump's doing, and they don't understand the tariffs. And walk us through what's happening on a macro scale right now and your kind of view on President Trump as a leader and what kind of leader we need in these conditions.

Yeah. Well, I think I've seen this movie before, the optimism about crypto adoption and regulation. I'm sort of in the camp that, you know, it's show me now. I mean, I like the tone, but I want to see the first bill passed. That's going to be the Genius Act, which is renamed the Stablecoin Act from back, you know, a few years ago. That's close to being passed, which would be a very big move forward for the crypto industry because it would show the adoption starting at a regulated level, even though it's the basics of a digital payment system in stablecoin. The Trump question's more complex. And the thing I've realized about Trump, we both came up in television. He started Apprentice the same month I started Shark Tank 17 years ago. That's where we met in New York selling the ads to car— they're called the forwards. We sell the ads to the car companies. The thing to realize about him is you have to differentiate the noise from the signal. This situation in Canada, because we're here in Canada right now, where Canadians have taken a dim view of Americans, let me explain how that happened. Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump had a toxic relationship because Trudeau years ago when Trump had his first term, his first mandate, kept throwing darts at him in the press all around the world, never thinking he'd return to the White House. And Chrystia Freeland also, Trump hates her even more. So you've got a really bad situation. And he was having fun with Trudeau just last December saying, well, you're going to be a governor. We're going to buy Canada. That's his nature. He's bombastic that way. Canadians didn't like it. It changed the outcome of the Canadian election. Carney was able to, in a brilliant move, take everybody away from the Liberal Party's lack of success. And 10 years that Canada has become an economic disaster because the party's policy, of which Carney was actually part of the last 5 years, was an advisor to the idiot king. So you really had a situation where the two of them did— Canada has no GDP growth, massive debt, no investment capital coming here anymore, no projects invested in in the last decade, no pipelines, nothing. And the Canadians have suffered for it. They've lost 38% of their net worth as the Canadian dollar collapsed. But he was brilliant in saying, don't look at that. Look at this guy south of the border. I will protect you from him. And it was brilliant. And now he's prime minister. Not a majority mandate, but close enough. So he has a big opportunity to make things work. But you've got to understand with Trump, It's the signal you want to focus on, not the noise. And I think he's doing some really amazing things in the Middle East right now and what he's doing in crypto. I don't shill for politicians. I like policy. So I'm very optimistic. And the real opportunity for Canada is an economic union with the United States, not selling itself, but combining the economies against the Chinese, which I think will happen one day.

So not selling itself, essentially not becoming a 51st state. But rather uniting in the power to become one superpower.

We're sitting in Ontario. If you were sitting in Calgary with me, they want to become the 51st state. They're done with the idiot king. So it's sort of, the Trudeau policies were just brutal and he really was an idiot. I think everybody's figured that out now.

Well, just then riding off that, I did do a podcast recently with Tim Draper and he has this theory about strong leadership. And that weak leaders want to control people, you know, put— stifle innovation, and that strong leaders actually set people free. And that has historically made GDP grow. It has, you know, the weak leaders, it leads to flatlined economy potentially like you're discussing here in Canada, right?

Yeah.

So what is your thought on that? Is Trump that kind of person to set the tone for what we need? I know you've said some stuff about having the distancing yourself from the deranged Trump syndrome, right? Like, is he the guy to get this done? Is that what we need?

I mean, I invest all around the world and I've come to the conclusion in the last couple of months that 50% of the population in any country has Trump Derangement Syndrome. They just, they want to spend time talking about Trump, which is useless because he's the president for the next 3 and a half years. And it's the policy you want to focus on. What are his policies? I don't have opinion yet, positive or negative on Trump. I don't care. It's what are his policies? And I say for the crypto industry, the policies look pretty good right now. right now. For Canada, it's a different situation. The Canadian people are the richest people on earth in terms of proven reserves of resources run by idiots. So it's an amazing situation. They continue to become poorer, yet they're the richest. And the only difference is idiot management. That's it. So your point is good about leadership. You need you need management that has executional skills.

Right.

You have to hire managers. In the parliamentary system, you have a prime minister and then they hire managers for each mandate, whether it's finance or resources, whatever it is. And Trudeau hired idiots. So you had a pyramid of morons and it was just, they had no skill sets, no executional skills. Freeland was a journalist running finance. No country on earth in the G7 would ever do that. And she was a disaster and she's still there. I mean, it's incredible. I would've whacked her so soon if she's one of my businesses, she'd be gone. She's horrific. Anyways, I don't want to be disrespectful and I'm not. I'm just telling the truth.

You're unapologetically explaining what's going on in the economy, right? Yeah.

No, and I mean, for her, we got to make sure she doesn't have any mandate of material consequence. She could be, I don't know, nothing would be a good thing. Don't let her do anything. Pay her, but just stay at home.

Yes. No, understood. So then brushing onto the topic of tariffs briefly before we get into the future of crypto, paint this picture. I know we don't have a lot of time. We're here at Consensus on the ground in Canada. But so tariffs, people are so rattled about them. And I'm one to always focus. I always say tune out the noise, just focus on what matters. I tend to think that tariffs are more noise than anything else and a negotiation tactic. Recently, he rolled back the tariffs on China and things are paused for the moment and the stock market seems to rip when that happens. So people are afraid. How do you think these tariffs will eventually pan out and what is he trying to do here and how will this affect the market?

You're speaking specifically of the Canadian tariffs right now?

Well, in general.

So the China situation is different. If you look at, there's 18 countries, China's one of them, that make up over 70% of the trade with the United States. So the big blocs are the EU, the UK, which is not a member of the EU, Switzerland, also not a member, India, Japan, Canada, Mexico. Canada is only 2.5% of the world's GDP. So while we have great partnerships, or had, with 28 states, we're not that big in terms of global GDP. So we're a little down the line in terms of when we're going to get to negotiate because no administration has ever tried to negotiate 60 trade agreements at once.

Right.

So the China deal is sort of the template for the others. China right now is a 10-on-10 reciprocal plus a 20% penalty on fentanyl. So goods going into the United States are tariffed at 30% today. 10 plus 20 on the fentanyl and 10% going into China. So the Chinese can get rid of the fentanyl penalty pretty quickly. So you're left with a 10 on 10. Now, what's interesting about that, the US does not have a VAT tax. There's no consumption tax in the United States. Right. Every other country, pretty well every other country has between 7 and 14% VAT. So you go buy a handbag in Italy, you go to the airport, you get back your VAT or France or whatever. I think where we're going with this whole thing is the US is going to set reciprocal tariffs 10 on 10, both directions.

Interesting.

And essentially Trump, you may say this is a brilliant move, but he's basically created a VAT tax in the US without calling it a VAT tax. It's called a tariff. And Congress would never agree to a VAT tax. They never have. But these tariffs are essentially That's interesting. Yeah. And I think any economy has proven that they can exist with a 10% VAT. It's a consumer, it's a consumption tax. And so I think that'll be— that's why the market is moving back. In fact, it's recovered all of its losses since April 3rd and then some in the most volatile, unbelievable moves, 1,000 points a day.

Yeah, it's been a bit wild.

And here we are, Bitcoin at over $100,000. I mean, look, it's volatility, but it's based on watching the sausage being made. Trump always has a camera. No other administration has ever said, let's do a Zelensky meeting in front of the press.

Oh, it's pretty unique.

And so Carney was the same way when he went to represent Canada. We need to get in front of Trump's— Harold Lutnick and Doug Burgum and You know, the rest of the administration to negotiate what Canada's going to get. And right now we're kind of bottom of the list because we're small.

Right. So short-term turbulent, but long-term good for the markets, setting precedents.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, the signal— I talked about signal and noise with Trump— the signal from Trump is actually, let's combine the economies. Let's— because if you combine— Canada has all the resources and the US is the largest consumer market on earth. You combine those 2 together, We're a behemoth. I mean, we are so big and we'd be so wealthy and we would— the power of that union, you could say to any country on earth, including China, don't fuck with us.

Yeah.

And you would be right. And so that's what he sees. And I think we'll get there. Carney was smart to use the anti-American rhetoric to get himself elected and good for him.

Right. And here we are now. Yeah. Potential convergence of the two.

Right.

I want to transition over to crypto now as we only have a few more minutes to wrap this up. It seems that, you know, it's been a lot of talk. It's been a lot of theory. We went through a tough administration, largely anti-crypto, I would say, with the former— well, the SEC at that time. And now we're transitioning to the tech is ready, right? It's ready to be implemented. Let's see how we can implement it. Let's make it seamless. And you're invested in infrastructure and DeFi. What's one of your favorite use cases or narratives coming up in this next kind of wave of crypto?

Well, that's a great question because the next piece of legislation we should all be excited about here at this conference is that Stablecoin Act, the Genius Act. Because think about what's the biggest market on earth. People say, oh, it's the stock market, or it's the bond market. No, it isn't. It's the currency market. It's a multi-trillion-dollar daily transactional market. And it's one of the most inefficient in the world because if you want to transfer Canadian dollars into US or Canadian dollars into Swiss francs or Japanese yen, you're using a 60-year-old technology.

Right.

That is absolute shit. And it's really expensive and it's slow. When we pass the Stablecoin Act, you'll be able to just instantly on the chain transfer to any country. And if the regulator there accepts that platform, You'll do that as a digital payment. You will save billions of dollars in fees.

Right.

Now, money center banks are not going to like this because it's a big part of their business, but I don't give a shit about them. I think they've sat on their hands when they had the chance to be part of this. And innovators like Robinhood, like Coinbase, like WonderFi, they became the standard investing millions of dollars to build these platforms up. Circle, I'm an investor in that too. I mean, that's USDC. So I think I'm pretty excited about that. Just that one thing—

Is massive.

Is massive. And so if in a year from now when we gather again at this conference, if we've got that, there will have been billions of dollars of fees saved.

Right. And I know you've referenced Jamie Dimon and how he kind of like sucks the fees out of you when, you know, you're doing transactions there.

He's a great manager, but he hates crypto. Everybody knows that.

It makes sense, right?

Crypto is going to go— It's going to roll right over them. What can you do?

And the basis points, I know you've said, for transferring USDC around the world is infinitely cheaper.

Of course.

And so, yeah, there's— the market's ripe for disruption. And speaking of disrupting markets, we— I'm very excited about the RWA space. I was in Davos this year and I heard Larry Fink just talking about all assets will be tokenized and all people talking about adoption. Actually, I remember an event with you and Benzinga in New York quite a while back. We were talking about how to onboard the next billion users to crypto. And there are theories about brands and about UX/UI being seamless and wallets. So, we usually have cocktails on the show where we give you a cocktail at 9 AM.

Look at this shameless promotion.

Literally, I am. But I will say I'm super excited about it because I'm passionate that I finally get to become a co-founder of something where I can help with that adoption.

Well, I wish you the best of luck.

Yeah. And, you know, I heard that you're also in the industry.

I am going into the— not vodka, but tequila business, which It took me 3 years to get licensed in Mexico. It's not easy. But, you know, I applaud what you're doing because this is about building brand. It's not easy to do, but it's a very big market.

Right. Very big market. We've added a crypto element so that you can scan the top.

I thought that was really interesting when I looked at the bottle.

All Time High stands for ATH Vodka. And it's a real-world use case where people get excited about it. They're interacting with crypto when they scan. They go into the app. They can purchase products at the bar where the Bottles are stocked and they don't even know they're doing it. And that's just one way of onboarding them. There's so many things around loyalty and trust and storytelling that you're absolutely good at. So on that note, what would you say to founders? Like, what are the biggest mistakes that crypto founders make in this industry?

They're very optimistic about outcomes, so much so that many of them go bankrupt because what they're anticipating is going to happen doesn't happen. And so you've got to take a long view, particularly if you're developing a new level on a new chain or something. Adoption is very, very slow. Getting customer acquisition is very, very hard. I mean, ETH may not be the best platform, but because it's so adopted globally, it's slow, it's got issues, but it's still number one.

Absolutely.

And so I'm an investor in Avalanche and HBAR and Polygon and ETH. I mean, I got a pretty big portfolio, but I don't know who's going to win. I mean, you look at the price volatility of HBAR, my goodness. I mean, it's 50% a week up and down.

Yeah, yeah. I've been watching that myself, actually. Yeah.

But it's telling you that for me, the adoption is slowly starting to happen there. And I have a pretty big position in that along with others. But I just don't know. I think the portfolio approach, the diversification really matters with the exception of Bitcoin. That's my number one position, obviously. Yeah.

Yeah. And on that, I'm going to do a rapid-fire round now. So we'll do a second round on the podcast and we'll get deeper into the crypto atmosphere and the future of the space to paint that picture. But just so we can jump into this before you go, the lightning round. Okay. These are all the questions that everybody loves, right? So we touched on what are you most excited about, what narrative? So we already went through that one. Of course, everybody wants to know bull market top for Bitcoin this cycle, pick a number.

$150,000.

$150,000. Okay. I will say one little thing about that. I had the Mooch on this past April and he did say a few interesting things, which was never bet against the US. So you guys kind of converged on that point.

I know the Mooch very well.

Yeah? I saw your sparring match with him actually. Your verbal spar. You won.

I kicked his ass. I'm very proud of that. He needed that ass kick.

If you haven't seen that, go check it out. It's a good one. But he said that Bitcoin should be trading at the capitalization of an entire asset class, the market cap of an asset class, not as a business.

Yeah.

Right? And that it could easily trade at half the market cap of gold and would still be undervalued. What would you say?

You know, we've talked about that, he and I, for 2 years now. I agree with him, but I said to him, look, it's never gonna happen till the regulator designates it either a commodity or a security, which we don't have yet. We need the Infrastructure Act. It's going to kind of be, in my mind, in a range between $80,000 and $200,000 forever until it gets designated as a commodity, which I believe it is. But the regulator could call it a security, but it won't matter. It just needs to be determined so that it can be indexed.

Right. Okay, good. We'll get on to a few more rapid-fire rounds. I know you touched on this earlier. Ethereum versus Solana. What's your pick today?

Solana.

Okay. Biggest mistake crypto founders make?

Lack of diversification.

I would agree with you on that one. Most underrated crypto project right now?

Oh, that's interesting. I would have to say, but I'm talking my book here, I think HBAR is going to be big. I really do.

HBAR, that's one in our portfolio as well.

Yeah, but I own it, so I have to disclose that, but I think it's going to be big.

No, absolutely. I would agree with you on that one. Will Kevin O'Leary launch a token or blockchain fund in the future?

You know, that's a great question. I'll tell you what I'm looking at with Paul Atkins, the new head of the SEC. I'm listening to what he's saying. I think we're going to tokenize securities soon. In other words, you still need a prospectus, but if you're— everybody knows I'm a royalty guy, so if I could own a security that paid a distribution, I could pay it on the chain.

Right.

Right into your wallet. That really intrigues me, so I am looking at that now because I manage funds, but that's intriguing me. But it'd still be a security. It would still be regulated. That's cool, but it would be so efficient if you got your distribution right into your wallet and I could communicate with you right to your wallet, avoiding the whole cost that exists. I mean, there's so much potential.

Huge disruption.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. A few more questions. Biggest barrier to mainstream adoption, regulation, UX, or trust?

Regulation. That's it. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Last question. Which comes first, crypto in every wallet or AI in every app?

AI in every app because it's so close to happening. Crypto in every wallet requires years of regulation.

Right.

We need to get it. But I was in Dubai last week and I saw for the first real estate project in the world, completely AI-driven. You know, people talk about smart homes. What they're doing over there is you basically talk to your house. Refrigerator, 52 degrees, open garage door.

It's advanced over there.

All the— we have apps for security, apps for cameras, apps for temperature, apps for door locks and all that. That's all bullshit. What they're doing over there is everything is on one AI platform and it knows you through facial recognition and voice recognition. It's the future. It's the most incredible thing you've ever seen. And it's going to be here in 24 months.

Absolutely.

Those guys are so far ahead of us.

They are. They are. And as we wrap this up, I see you've got 2 watches on today. Just let us know what you're wearing.

I am wearing the Cartier Crash on the right in Dubai time and the Santos Cartier in New York time, Toronto time, obviously. They're both platinum. But these watches, what's unique is this Santos is built to go in reverse.

Ah, okay.

It tells time in reverse. The rumor in the watch, you know, collecting community, and I've never tested this, but there's so few of these. I think I have the only 2 in North America. Nobody knows how many they've made of these. This is the skeleton platinum Crash. But if you hold them together, because of the Supposedly the sonic waves of platinum, your biological clock goes in reverse. You start getting younger. I have not done it. We've been counting. I'm too scared to do it, but that's the rumor from Paris. We've uncovered the truth. That's why these are such a coveted— imagine this, you really become a vampire.

I like it. I like it. So we have a partnership with Jacob Co watches, which I know you sell.

Oh, love him. Love him. I have several of his All right. Okay.

All right, well, thank you so much, Kevin. We'll do round 2 soon.

Absolutely great.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much.