Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Says He’s Betting Big on This Nascent Crypto Sector

Business tycoon and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary unveils that he is betting big in an emerging crypto sector.

In an interview with Anthony Pompliano, O’Leary says he asked his team to start looking into the decentralized finance (DeFi) space as a way to be more productive with his companies’ capital.

“What interests me the most right now is DeFi. I think it’s where the puck is going and I’ll tell you why. So now I’ve got a large amount of capital tied up, 3% waiting in the operating companies, a lot of capital. And it’s not yielding anything right. I said to my guys, ‘Let’s get into some DeFi and take a portion of the assets and wrap into the Ethereum chain and let’s start making some interest. Let’s start looking at different ways we can loan our assets out.'” 

The renowned investor notes that after “going deep into the rabbit hole” with his DeFi research, he realized it was a sector with highly complex systems. O’Leary says he decided to invest in a new firm specializing in the space to make a new service that could make activity in the DeFi ecosystem easier.

“This is crazy complicated, but there must be millions of people that have a little bit of coin that want to make some 4%, 5%, 6% on it. Why don’t you go find me a company, a team that I can invest in that will do a commercialized DeFi. Not corporate, so that somebody that has a wallet that’s got maybe twenty grand, or $10,000 or $5,000 in it could easily do what I’m doing that takes a staff of four people?”

O’Leary highlights that he led a multi-million dollar investment into a Canadian-based firm called DeFi Ventures.

“We put a significant round together for them, a $20,000,000 round. I’m the lead on that thing. I think it’s going to be a great company. We haven’t even announced it yet. It’s called DeFi Ventures. I’m going to rename it WunderFi because it’s going to be my vehicle.”

O’Leary, also known as “Mr. Wonderful,” says he sees DeFi as something that can finally allow investors to make their cash independently productive in an efficient manner.

“I guess what’s happening is the money is looking for the most frictionless way to actually be productive and so the reason DeFi is so interesting, instead of paying those crazy 2% fees that these wallets are charging, I don’t need those guys for anything. Maybe I need a ramp to put my fiat into Ether or whatever, but after that, I don’t need them, and I can go and do this for a fraction of those costs on a decentralized basis…

Imagine if I could’ve over these years had a 5% yield on my gold. That would’ve been incredible. Well, I can with my crypto, so that’s really what I’m doing in DeFi and I think I’ve got the best team in North America.”

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