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Another billionaire changes mind on crypto

Another billionaire changes mind on crypto

Back in 2018 Carl Icahn said that crypto was “ridiculous”. Three years later and he is admitting that he may get into crypto “in a big way”. He has said that he may put up to $1.5 billion into the asset class. 

Icahn, billionaire founder of Icahn Enterprises, said in a Bloomberg interview that he is ready to get into crypto in a big way after studying Bitcoin, Ethereum and the crypto market as a whole. 

He said that there are opportunities in the cryptocurrency market given that alternative currencies can be seen as a "natural manifestation of inflation in the economy”.  

The former advisor to the Trump administration has a net worth of $15.6 billion. He becomes yet another billionaire investor who has changed his mind on cryptocurrencies over the past several months. 

Back in 2018 he said in a CNBC interview that cryptocurrencies were “ridiculous” and that “I wouldn’t touch that stuff”. He said back then that he didn’t dislike cryptocurrencies just because he didn’t understand them, but because of regulatory concerns. 

Now he has changed his tune completely, admitting that the usual criticism of cryptocurrencies having no intrinsic value was “a little wrong-headed”. He stated that the dollar was the problem. 

“Well, what’s the value of a dollar? The only value of the dollar is because you can use it to pay taxes,” he said. “I’m looking at the whole business, and how I might get involved in it.” 

He remarked that alternative currencies were being looked at given the “ridiculous prices” that certain stocks in the equities market were being traded for. He referred to these as meme-stocks. 

“I don’t think Reddit and Robinhood and those guys are necessarily bad, I think they do serve a purpose,” Icahn said. “Money is funnelling back into companies. Some of these companies might be OK, but a number of them, the risk-reward is absurd.” 

On cryptocurrencies, Icahn thought that not all of them would survive and that most would disappear if they didn’t have a proper use case.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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