Kevin O'Leary, the Canadian investor and television personality famously known as “Mr. Wonderful” on ABC's Shark Tank, revealed in a recent podcast that he would allocate 5% of his investment portfolio to a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The disclosure marks a notable shift from his long-standing skepticism toward digital assets.
From Skeptic to Cautious Holder
O'Leary has been openly critical of bitcoin in the past. In May 2020, he told CNBC that bitcoin was “worthless” and “a useless currency,” adding that “it's garbage because you can't get in and out of it in large amounts.” However, he later purchased a small amount of bitcoin after being challenged by students while teaching a class at Harvard University. Despite holding some BTC, he remains wary of its extreme price volatility.
“Every time I talk off the record to the regulators — and I talk to them all the time for various reasons — they're a little squeamish on bitcoin, they are not quite there yet,” O'Leary cautioned during the podcast hosted by Morgan Creek Digital partner Anthony Pompliano. He stressed that regulatory comfort is the single most important factor before he commits significant capital.
The ETF Proposal
O'Leary specifically called for a SEC-approved bitcoin ETF as the vehicle for his investment. “If tomorrow morning we woke up and the SEC said you can create an ETF with bitcoin and we think bitcoin is a legitimate payment system and store of wealth, not only would it go up but you'd have a lot of people like me investing in it,” he stated.
He elaborated that once such an ETF is available, he would give it a 5% weighting in his portfolio. “I don't really want a significant portion of my portfolio having that amount of volatility,” he explained, preferring the ETF structure that offers liquidity and diversification. O'Leary noted that many of his existing investments are already in ETFs, making a bitcoin ETF a natural fit.
Diversification Concerns
As a champion of diversification, O'Leary expressed unease that the crypto space requires heavy concentration in a single asset — bitcoin — to achieve outsized returns. “It bothers me a little bit that in the crypto space you have to be very concentrated to get these returns in one cryptocurrency, bitcoin,” he said. He believes a regulated ETF would allow investors like him to participate more broadly without taking on excessive single-asset risk.
O'Leary's comments come at a time when the crypto industry is actively lobbying the SEC for a bitcoin ETF. While several applications are pending, the regulator has yet to approve any spot bitcoin ETF. O'Leary's conditional willingness to invest signals that mainstream adoption may hinge on regulatory clarity. Whether his 5% allocation becomes a reality depends on how quickly the SEC moves to embrace digital assets.
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