Kevin O’Leary: Crypto Is About to Roll Right Over Traditional Banking

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

It makes sense, right?

Crypto's going to go— 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'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 him. What can he do?

And the basis points, I know you 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, 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, guys, 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 gotta 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.

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.

Right.

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 fantastic.

It's the most incredible thing you've ever seen, and it's going to be here in 24 months.