Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Thinks Bitcoin Will Now Beat Stocks

Speaking at the Bitcoin 2021 Conference in Miami this past weekend to Yahoo Finance, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary expressed some major optimism about Bitcoin.

O’Leary has predicted that a shift among bitcoin miners to more sustainable forms of energy could propel bitcoin to outperform stocks by a wide margin over the next decade.

That is if the cryptocurrency can solve its sustainability problem to once again attract institutional investors.

“It’s both a huge problem and a massive opportunity, I prefer to look at the opportunity,” O’Leary said. “I called it out on that Yahoo Finance interview, and the proverbial poo poo hit the fan. I took a lot of flack, but it’s obviously on the mind of the institutional client.”

“At the end of the day, there’s a new sheriff in town, it’s called ESG. Every single institution, including from Larry Fink on down at BlackRock who put out his ESG letter, his sustainability mandate, this used to be fringe, it’s not fringe anymore. You have to be sustainable in terms of how you look at investing, or you’re going to lose your investor,” he added.

O’Leary has enacted deals with miners who are using sustainable forms of electricity to secure payment in bitcoin that he can prove has been mined sustainably.

“I just think that the minute we solve the institutional ESG issue, Katy bar the doors. Because people don’t understand the majority of the world’s investments are in the institutions and the sovereign funds. That’s where the real money is,” he said.

According to O’Leary, the same ESG overhang has put negative pressure on oil companies.
“That’s sustainability committees pushing out the stocks out of mandates out of portfolios … that just gives you the idea of the power of the ESG mandate,” O’Leary added. “We need to solve for the institutional client. They want to invest in bitcoin. They can’t right now, it’s a really weird situation.”

“I think we will solve the ESG issue on bitcoin in the next 12 to 18 months and I think over the next 10 years, the bitcoin asset itself will beat the S&P [500]. So if you’re thinking about a 7 to 8% average over a decade on the S&P, I think bitcoin would be 300 to 400 basis points over that, I really do,” he said.