Billionaire and hedge fund legend Steve Cohen says that he’s officially “fully converted” to crypto and does not want to miss out on an asset class that he thinks has tremendous potential.
In an interview with Jawad Mian, who is the founder of Stray Reflections, an independent global macro research firm, Cohen, who heads Point72 Asset Management, says that he’s doing a deep dive into crypto and is looking at ways his hedge fund can take advantage of the nascent space.
“I’ve finally decided I’m doing a deep dive into crypto. I’ve fully converted, and I have an old saying, ‘At the poker table you’ve got to pay to learn.’ There’s no way around it. You can talk all you want, but you’ve got to get in the game. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to start building something within Point72 in addition. We’re in the process of starting to think about that…
The timing is never good. Who knows? I don’t know if these things are going to go up.”
Rather than trading BTC, Cohen says he’s more interested in the underlying technology behind crypto, positing that it has the potential to be “disruptive” and “transformational.”
“Forget Bitcoin. I don’t care about Bitcoin. I care more about the technology behind the blockchain and how transformational it is and how disruptive it could be. I feel like the way those markets are developing could be a real interesting adjacency to what we do at Point72, and so I’m not missing this. I’m not going to miss this. I already feel like I missed the first part of it, but I still feel like it’s early.
It’s an example of wanting to look forward and take some risk. I may look foolish initially, but you know, you size it accordingly, learn the game and then when you’re confident, take it to the next level.”
According to a Fortune report, Cohen entered the cryptocurrency space in 2018 when Cohen Private Ventures invested in Autonomous Partners, a hedge fund focused on cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
As of March 31st, Point72 has $22.1 billion in assets under management (AUM) with 11 offices around the world.
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