Known American billionaire and founder of Icahn Enterprises, Carl Icahn, changed his tune on bitcoin in a Bloomberg interview, showing optimism on select cryptocurrencies. The entrepreneur added that his enterprises are planning to enter the crypto market with up to $1.5 billion in investments.
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In the interview, Icahn said that most cryptocurrencies aside from Bitcoin and Ethereum will not survive in future, but reiterated common talking points that the market is here to stay. According to data from Forbes, Icahn’s total net worth stands at around $15.6 billion.
He told Bloomberg: “I’m looking at the whole business to study how I may get involved in it with Icahn Enterprises in a relatively big way. I do think that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets are here to stay in one form or the other. A big way for us could be a billion dollars or something like $1.5 billion but that would be a sort of big way“.
The comments from Icahn on bitcoin come as a surprise since the billionaire has criticised bitcoin in the past. After a significant jump in BTC’s price in the last 12 months, Icahn changed his tone on bitcoin. The trend of billionaire-critics turned avid bitcoin supporters is not new. In mid March, former bitcoin critic and well-known investment titan Howard Marks turned bullish on bitcoin, walking back self-described ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to bitcoin completely.
Icahn on Bitcoin and Ethereum
During the discussion, Icahn compared the world’s largest cryptocurrencies and outlined the functionalities of bitcoin and ethereum, seemingly favouring the latter over the former.
He said: “With Ethereum, it’s the underlying blockchain. So, Ethereum has two things, you can use it as a payment system, you can use it as a store of value. So Ethereum and Bitcoin are different. Bitcoin to me is just a store of value.”
Since the start of 2021, institutional adoption of both bitcoin and ethereum has increased dramatically. Now that Icahn has publicly announced his interest in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, is it safe to say that the multi-billionaire is already comfortably in the space?
Institutional adoption of Bitcoin and Ethereum has increased rapidly since the start of 2021. Companies like MicroStrategy, Square, Tesla, Paypal and China’s Meitu all hold bitcoin their balance sheet.
Bitcoin exchanges hands just below $38,500 at the time of writing, recovering 30% from the lows as on-chain data suggests a bottom might be in.
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