Billionaire investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has revealed that he is still investing in crypto despite the disastrous collapse of FTX and the subsequent crypto meltdown.
In a comment to Business Insider, O’Leary Said Bitcoin has been its best-performing holding so far this year, followed by other altcoins, including Polygon’s Matic.
The flagship cryptocurrency is up more than 70% year-to-date (YTD), outperforming major stock indexes and commodities.
As of now, BTC is trading around $28,500 over the previous day. The token has gained more than 27% over the past month.
Similarly, Matic, the native token of popular Ethereum layer-2 solution Polygon, is up over 40% YTD. The coin is currently trading at $1.15, up about 2% from the previous day.
Crypto prices have soared this year after BTC crashed 65% in 2022 in the wake of some high-profile collapses of crypto projects and hedge funds, including the implosion of FTX, the third largest crypto exchange in the world.
Notably, O’Leary was one of several celebrities who aggressively promoted FTX online. When O’Leary first started promoting FTX, he said that it was FTX’s compliance system that attracted him to invest in the crypto exchange.
He has recently revealed that he was paid around $15 million to promote the now-controversial exchange. However, after taxes, agents’ fees, a $1 million equity investment in FTX, and using $10 million to buy crypto, which is now stuck on the FTX exchange, he has nothing left over from the deal, O’Leary claimed.
FTX investors have filed a class action The lawsuit against the founder and former CEO of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange SBF, as well as several celebrities promoting the platform. Listed celebrities include Kevin O’Leary, Golden State Warriors, Shaquille O’Neal, Udonis Haslem, David Ortiz, Naomi Osaka, and more.
O’Leary moves all crypto assets to Canada
O’Leary also revealed that he has moved all of his crypto assets to WonderFi, a fully regulated Canadian crypto exchange.
This has come in the form of WonderFi, Coinsquare, and CoinSmart as recently as announced Their merger to create Canada’s largest regulated crypto asset trading platform with over 1.65 million registered users.
According to O’Leary, the increasing regulatory pressure on Binance and Coinbase is a sign that policymakers are coming after crypto companies following the FTX fiasco.
“Talking to Senators After the Hearing [in December]”I felt their frustration,” O’Leary told Insider. “They were really angry, and they released the hounds. They told the regulators ‘go get them,’ and all of a sudden we have a mountain of enforcement action.”
Just last week, SEC Sent A “Wells Notice” to Coinbase is threatening the crypto exchange with legal action regarding some of its listed digital assets, its staking service Coinbase Earn, Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Wallet.
Thereafter, the CFTC announced that it is suing Binance and founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao over allegations that the crypto exchange knowingly offered unregistered crypto derivative products in the US in violation of the law.
In an interview with Kitko News earlier this year, the billionaire Claimed That all unregulated crypto companies and exchanges will “go to zero” and a regulated crypto market will emerge out of it. He added that crypto is not bad in itself, but rather it is all “rogue players and unregulated exchanges” and worthless tokens that are to blame.