Kevin O’Leary plans to launch a Web 3.0-focused investment fund called Cipher, the Shark Tank investor told Forkast Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau at the Converge22 blockchain and cryptocurrency conference on Wednesday in San Francisco.
See related article: Capital gains: How Web3 property rights can transform the digital economy
Fast facts
- “We’ve got to get away from this speculative price of an asset here,” he told Lau. “We’ve got to find reasons that this [technology] gets embedded into the economy.”
- The Canadian entrepreneur said he recently became a citizen of the United Arab Emirates to “work freely” in a region that has attracted investment by some of crypto’s heaviest hitters, including exchanges FTX, Binance and Crypto.com.
- O’Leary revealed that the new all-Web3 fund’s lead investor comes from the United Arab Emirates. “There’s a tremendous amount of capital and interest there to invest in this space,” he added.
- The Shark Tank investor also commented on Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., who called Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies as “decentralized Ponzi schemes” during the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services hearing.
- “This is my interpretation. He feels threatened by some of this technology, particularly around payments,” O’Leary said. “This isn’t about speculation on asset price. This is about reducing the fees of how the world’s economies work more transparent, more productive, completely auditable, regulated, but less expensive.”
- O’Leary is a vocal proponent of Web3 technology as a spokesperson for cryptocurrency exchange FTX and an investor in financial technology company Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin and the organizer of the Converge22 conference.
- Cryptocurrencies have yet to emerge from a prolonged market slump since the US$40 billion collapse of the Terra-LUNA token and stablecoin in May, an event that prompted regulators worldwide to focus on drawing up rules for the developing industry.
- “Now, remaining players are being strengthened by the fact they’re still in business,” O’Leary said. “They’re able to raise capital.”
See related article: Circle says customers could redeem all of USDC in one day