Although Bitcoin couldn’t hold above the $1 trillion market cap for very long, doing so in the first place might have been a turning point for even the most skeptical investors. It has even caused one Shark Tank investor to change his tune, shifting a portion of his portfolio into the highly volatile asset. Here’s how else the cryptocurrency asset class has been able to turn other high-wealth investors from naysayers into believers.

ABC’s Shark Tank Investor Kevin O’Leary Allocates 3% Into Bitcoin And Ethereum

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are extremely volatile compared to traditional asset counterparts. That volatility has kept Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary from making a bid on the asset class for years, aside from a small purchase he made on Coinbase in 2017.

RELATED READING | ONE YEAR LATER: BITCOIN EMERGES AS “THE STIMULUS ASSET”

Over the last few years, the affectionally-dubbed “Mr. Wonderful” has appeared on CNBC blasting the asset class as “garbage,” but he’s now bought into weighted bucket of Bitcoin and Ethereum with at least 3% of his portfolio, according to a recent segment.

O’Leary says that the volatility the asset class is notorious for still “sickens” him, but that he’s “getting used to it” and thinks that crypto is “here to stay.”

The rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum over the last year has been undeniable | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Crypto Wins Over Mr. Wonderful, What Happens When The Feeding Frenzy Begins?

O’Leary is a mainstay on ABC’s Shark Tank, alongside other wealthy entrepreneurs and investors such as Robert Herjavec, Lori Grenier, and Mark Cuban. Cuban, another crypto pundit who once said he’d rather have bananas than Bitcoin, has also recently come around to the asset class.

Cuban hasn’t necessarily given much support to Bitcoin itself, but has recently dabbled in NFTs in recent months.

RELATED READING | FAMED INVESTOR, BLACK SWAN AUTHOR IS “GETTING RID OF” HIS BITCOIN, HERE’S WHY

Bitcoin and Ethereum, have grown enormously in ROI, market cap, and adoption. The pandemic and resulting stimulus-related money printing propelled the digitally scarce asset with futuristic, decentralized use cases into the forefront of finance, and since then, no one can deny their relevancy and potential.

With that widespread realization that these technologies are “here to stay” as O’Leary said, there’s a mad dash to buy in now rather than paying increasingly higher prices later on. High wealth individuals like O’Leary, whose net worth is reportedly around $400 million are only just starting to allocate 3% of their portfolios and look what how much the asset’s price has appreciated.

What will the result be when large portfolios are crypto-dominant? It is a future that’s hard to imagine for the time being, but as the asset class has shown its transformative potential has nowhere nearly been tapped, and is only just beginning to show what it is capable of.

Featured image from Deposit Photos, Charts from TradingView.com

MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin (BTC) buying spree shows no signs of slowing, after CEO Michael Saylor announced the purchase of another 328 BTC on Monday. The acquisition, which was paid for in cash, cost the firm around $15 million, and equated to an average coin price of $45,710 at the time of purchase.

The investment takes MicroStrategy’s total Bitcoin holdings to 90,859 coins — a haul worth $4.3 billion based on the current coin price. The firm essentially dollar-cost-averaged into Bitcoin over the course of the past five months, leaving the average price of each of its Bitcoin purchases at $24,063 per coin. Saylor tweeted on March. 1:

MicroStrategy has purchased an additional ~328 bitcoins for ~$15.0 million in cash at an average price of ~$45,710 per #bitcoin. As of 3/1/2021, we #hodl ~90,859 bitcoins acquired for ~$2.186 billion at an average price of ~$24,063 per bitcoin. $MSTRhttps://t.co/fGH5KacsPI

— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) March 1, 2021

The firm first acquired Bitcoin in August 2020 when it made an initial $250 million outlay on 21,454 coins. MicroStrategy continued to buy more BTC at various points towards the end of 2020, eventually accumulating over 70,000 coins by the turn of the year.

In February the business intelligence firm announced that it would raise an additional $900 million for further Bitcoin purchases — a sum which eventually exceeded $1 billion when an additional 19,452 coins were purchased on Feb. 24.

MicroStrategy’s total outlay on Bitcoin stands at $2.18 billion, while current coin prices would value the firm’s holdings at $4.3 billion, meaning the firm would have made over $2 billion in five months were it to sell. However, there is little reason to suggest this will happen any time soon. Saylor previously said buying Bitcoin was one of the firm’s two corporate goals, along with growing its analytics software business.