While attending Tuesday’s SALT conference, billionaire fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen discussed why he had taken a personal and financial interest in the cryptocurrency industry. Interestingly, this comes after dismissing the space for years previously.
Cohen: From Skeptic to Supporter
As reported by Bloomberg, Cohen says it was his “crypto maniac” son who convinced him to investigate the industry further. He has since spent a number of months meeting informed people and learning about the technology and its possibilities as best as he could.
“Once I decided there were opportunities, and I thought this could be a space like the internet — it could be incredibly transformational – I wasn’t going to miss this”- Cohen noted at the ‘Generating Alpha Markets in Baseball’ discussion.
The billionaire has now invested in the industry in a personal capacity. He has put his own money towards Radkl – a quantitative trading firm for digital assets – while his family office has allocated $50 million towards Metaverse development company Recur.
Interestingly, Cohen’s interests are in the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, rather than any particular token. In fact, he outright dismisses the very first one.
“I don’t care about Bitcoin,” he said in an interview last week. “I care more about the technology behind the blockchain and how transformational it is and how disruptive it could be.”
Billionaires Seeing the Light of Crypto
Cohen isn’t the first big-money player to change his tune regarding digital assets. After telling people to “get out” of Bitcoin in 2018, Jordan Belfort – aka “The Wolf of Wall Street” – now predicts that Bitcoin could top $100k by the end of the year. He cites the asset’s finite supply as a reason to feel “spoiled by Bitcoin.”
Furthermore – although he still remains a doubter – even Peter Schiff also admits that Bitcoin could reach $100k by the year’s end and that he should’ve bought some when he had the chance in 2011. Yet unlike Cohen, Peter’s own crypto fanatic son Spencer Schiff has been unable to convince him to take his support all the way.
Featured Image Courtesy of NDTV
