American billionaire Carl Icahn plans to invest $1 billion in cryptocurrencies. Among the options studied by the investor are bitcoin and ether.
Carl Icahn plans to invest $1B in Crypto. American billionaire Carl Icahn plans to invest $1 billion in cryptocurrencies. Among the cryptocurrencies studied by Icahn’s team are ether and bitcoin. The famous investor provided the comments on Bloomberg TV on May 26. In his opinion, the fact that altcoins are gaining popularity is a natural response of people to inflation in the economy, he added.
During his announcement, he said, “Any criticism of the cryptocurrency that does not have an underlying value is a bit wrong,” said Icahn.
“What is the value of a dollar? The only value of the dollar is that you can use it to pay taxes. I’m looking at the whole business and how I could get involved with it through Icahn Enterprises on a relatively large scale.”
Carl Icahn, businessman
Reporters asked Icahn what he meant by “large scale.” He answered: “The big thing for us is not buying a few coins. On a large scale, it’s $1 billion, $1.5 billion, something at this level that will be significant for us. But sometimes we invest more, sometimes a lot less, so I won’t say for sure.“
Difference between the payments and store of value functions.
Icahn made a comparison between bitcoin and ether. He took the opportunity to highlight that Ethereum can play as a payment system and a store of value. On the other hand, he considers that bitcoin’s possibilities are limited only to being a store of value.
In this regard, he added that the cryptocurrencies unable to perform the value reserve function would be forced to leave the market since they can not guarantee the reliability of investments. The renowned investor observed: “Many cryptocurrencies issued today will not survive, but we believe that crypto can remain in one form. To be understood correctly, we have never bought cryptocurrencies but are studying them.”
People are looking for alternative investments.
Icahn also said that he thinks people are looking for alternative assets because a significant fraction of the stock market shares trade at “absurd prices.” He referred to those surging stocks as the so-called meme-stocks and some strategies offered by money managers.
The billionaire, whose net worth as of 2016 rounds $17.2 billion, according to some analysts, added that he doesn’t think Reddit and Robinhood and those guys “are necessarily bad.” “I think they have a purpose,” Icahn said. “The money is channeled to the companies. Some of these companies may be fine, but in some of them, the risk-reward is nonsense.“
More billionaires invest in bitcoin and ether.
Other billionaires have also made public their investments in cryptocurrencies. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and the co-host of Shark Tank, said in April 2021 that his investment portfolio comprises 60% bitcoin and 30% ether. Kevin O’Leary, who also appears on this reality television, announced that he invested 3% of his portfolio in bitcoin. However, he had called the cryptocurrency “rubbish“ less than two years ago.
O’Leary, known as “Mr. Wonderful,” tweeted on March 1, 2021: “Is Bitcoin a currency? An active? Perhaps all of the above. I go with an allowance from my portfolio of 3%. I’m also looking to invest in miners that can create 0 carbon-mandated coins.”
On his side, billionaire David Rubenstein also recently injected resources into bitcoin, despite the drop in its value.