Billionaire investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has revealed that he’s nonetheless investing in crypto regardless of the catastrophic collapse of FTX and the next crypto meltdown.

In a remark to Enterprise Insider, O’Leary mentioned that Bitcoin has been his top-performing holding up to now this yr, adopted by different altcoins together with Polygon’s Matic. 

The flagship cryptocurrency is up by greater than 70% year-to-date (YTD), beating main inventory indexes and commodities. 

As of now, BTC is buying and selling at round $28,500, nearly flat over the previous day. The coin is up by greater than 27% over the previous month. 

Equally, Matic, the native token of the favored Ethereum layer-2 resolution Polygon, is up greater than 40% YTD. The token is presently buying and selling at $1.15, up by round 2% over the previous day. 

The surge in crypto costs this yr comes after BTC crashed 65% in 2022 within the wake of some high-profile collapses of crypto initiatives and hedge funds, together with the implosion of FTX, as soon as the third-largest crypto change on the planet. 

Notably, O’Leary was one of many many celebrities who promoted FTX aggressively on-line. 

When O’Leary first started to advertise FTX, he mentioned it was FTX’s compliance techniques that drew him to put money into the crypto change. 

He has just lately revealed that he was paid round $15 million to advertise the now-defunct change. Nevertheless, after taxes, brokers charges, a $1 million fairness funding into FTX, and utilizing $10 million to purchase crypto that is now caught on the FTX change, he is bought nothing left from the deal, O’Leary has claimed. 

FTX buyers have filed a category motion lawsuit towards SBF, the founder and former CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency change, in addition to a number of celebrities who promoted the platform. 

The celebrities listed embrace Kevin O’Leary, Golden State Warriors, Shaquille O’Neal, Udonis Haslem, David Ortiz, Naomi Osaka, and extra. 

O’Leary Strikes All Crypto Property to Canada

O’Leary additionally revealed that he has moved all his crypto property to the absolutely regulated Canadian crypto change WonderFi. 

This comes as WonderFi, Coinsquare, and CoinSmart have just lately introduced their merger to create Canada’s largest regulated crypto asset buying and selling platform with over 1.65 million registered customers.

In accordance with O’Leary, the rising regulatory stress on Binance and Coinbase is a sign that policymakers are coming after crypto corporations after the FTX fiasco. 

“Speaking to the senators after the hearings [in December], I noticed the frustration they’d,” O’Leary advised Insider. “They had been actually pissed off, they usually have launched the hounds. 

They advised regulators ‘go get them,’ and rapidly now we have a mountain of enforcement motion.”

Simply final week, the SEC despatched a “Wells discover” to Coinbase, threatening the crypto change with authorized actions relating to a few of its listed digital property, its staking service Coinbase Earn, Coinbase Prime, and Coinbase Pockets. 

Subsequently, the CFTC introduced that it’s suing Binance and founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao on allegations that the crypto change knowingly supplied unregistered crypto by-product merchandise within the US within the transgression of the legislation.

In an interview with Kitco Information earlier this yr, the billionaire claimed that every one unregulated crypto corporations and exchanges will “go to zero” and a regulated crypto market will come out of it. 

He mentioned that crypto isn’t dangerous in and of itself, reasonably it’s all “rogue gamers and unregulated exchanges” and ineffective tokens which can be responsible.