 Welcome the man I'm sitting with today needs no introduction. You probably know I'm as Mr. Wonderful Maybe you've seen him on Shark Tank. He's a fellow Canadian businessman entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary Kevin It's so wonderful to have you today great to be here But I also want to make sure we cover my other nationalities because I don't want to diss anybody I'm also Irish and recently became an Emirati. Emirati. Wow so much happening in the Middle East in the UAE Great for business big crypto. Yeah center. That's excellent. Yeah, so Kevin yesterday I heard you speaking about Bitcoin mining and potentially its role in Creating a greener future a lot of people might not understand that because of all the fud surrounding Bitcoin mining Can you explain maybe the role of Bitcoin mining and creating a green technology or actually paving the way for more green technology? Yeah, and it's a good observation. You're making Let's start with fun flows. Okay, because what Bitcoin mining is a cap-axe. It's an infrastructure play It's a data center play so when the first companies started to build a hash here hashrates here in the United States They basically linked into the existing Electricity lines not knowing what the source of that power was it might have been flared gas It might have been coal. It could have been whatever it was. It's blended now That was fine two years ago and and why it mattered was that many large institutions like sovereign pension plans They are not allowed to own Bitcoin, but they want exposure To the assets so what they did and I know this because I'm in the indexing business So let's say you're a sovereign wealth fund in a Middle East country and you're most of your wealth came from oil But you don't want to invest more in oil. You already have that so you go to an indexer and you say, okay Index me the S&P 500 X oil X airlines. We don't want to own those and so indexers like me do that So we were exposed to fund flows by the trillions You know 24-7 we're servicing these giant entities and they are majority of wealth US pension plans sovereign funds This is where most of the money is in investors So the reason I'm walking you through this cycle is you'll understand this this massive switch that's going on in Bitcoin mining So we indexed all these companies companies like marathon hive Hut eight riot and others and that's how these large sovereign plans own Bitcoin because the price of these public stocks Goes up and down as a proxy against Bitcoin pricing. So, you know Bitcoin pricing gets cut in half They get cut in half if it doubles they double so it was a great way to own Bitcoin until The ESG mandate came out from it started with black rock Then you saw it in the POTUS executive order then the SEC just announced they were in a memo that they're contemplating carbon audits Unpublic companies doesn't matter what if you're a Bitcoin miner or any company that's in the S&P 500 And here's the problem Everybody knows and all of the Bitcoin miners were using carbon offsets. So they would say we're carbon neutral because he bought all these offsets the offset market is such a wide range of Call it target error that it's impossible to audit and here's the problem The SEC order is contemplating getting your audit firm to sign off on your carbon Neutrality in the same way they're signing off on your financials You can't get an auditor to sign that right now They're never going to do it because everybody knows that tracking error is so wide on carbon offsets in another term Carbon offsets are bullshit. That's the only way to put it. Okay, so all of a sudden we had to sell all those shares Because we know they're going to get into a lot of trouble when they try and prove their neutrality So the new mining is emerging. It's being funded primarily by sovereign wealth. And here's how it works You find a country like Norway or you find a province like Quebec or upstate New York or Montana or North Dakota Where there's excess hydroelectricity You build a facility right by the turbines It's a brand new build and you get an agreement with the miner I think this is happening right now in northern Norway with a company called bit zero. It's a private company I'm an investor in it. So it's largest investors out of the United Arab Emirates Every coin that they're awarded is staying on the balance sheet. So that becomes our proxy to Bitcoin now we own our coin now we've mined it ethically now we've mined it all green We do not have to be audited for carbon because there's no carbon. It's a hundred percent hydro And so in doing so we are not only capturing unused hydroelectricity We've got the latest state mining equipment which just uses 40% less energy We're taking the heat from the stacks and creating a hydroponic facility that grows tomatoes and a canning plant beside it Because in northern Norway, there's not that much sun for tomatoes. We're integrated into the community We are creating a new power source for all the citizens in that 3,000 person village That is the new mining. So the best way to look at this is We should applaud the early miners that you know built up capacity here in the United States But they are essentially the pioneers with the arrows in their back Because the capital is going to move away from them and it's going to go to the new generation of miner Which is the Norway model as I call it. We're building these in almost every state here in America that has hydro We're very fortunate because we have access to the latest technology A lot of people don't realize this but it's the sovereign wealth plans in the Middle East that were Neas and early on 25 years ago to buy capacity of chip manufacturing in many You know the global foundries and many of the other Taiwan semiconductors, etc So we have access to those mining chips that we need And we're going to build these new miners all over the world Brazil has hydro Georgia has hydro all of these Quebec has hydro That's the new model and I'm not against what's happening with The existing public companies u.s. And I'm getting a lot of people aren't happy for me telling the truth, but it is the truth They're screwed. They're going to face carbon audit. What can you do? And everybody knows that they're it's going to be very very hard for them to pass that and whatever happens There Stocks are going to be one alternative for an institution to buy or all these other companies that go public in the next 18 months It's obvious which ones they're going to pick. They're going to go with the green miners The real green miners that don't have to deal with carbon offsets Bottom line is and I think policy is showing it and the sec is driving it POTUS his order has it Carbon offsets are bullshit That's the story absolutely. That's interesting You talked about, you know, for me crypto proxy stocks are a way for these legacy financial institutions to actually participate in the market What's the limiting factor for outright ownership of bitcoin is it still the the regulatory side? Is it uncertainty on which way it's going to go from a you know from a policy perspective? What's preventing so many legacy finance institutions from actually investing outright in crypto? Or are they waiting for spot ETF for example? Well, you're 100 right. It's completely regulatory So here's here's how sovereign pension fund would work And this is pretty well the mandate state side and globally Let's say you're running a hundred billion dollar mandate You have certain parameters. You're allowed to work with and indexers like me. We work with these people every day Generally speaking, there's 11 sectors in the s&p You're allowed to hold up to 20 percent in any one sector and up to 5 percent in any one stock So those are sort of the diversification mandates and it's been that way for you know some derivative of that for forever So you get diversification within the broad hundred billion dollar mandate You have on top of you as the money manager a compliance department. They mark to market your positions by the second They know exactly what you hold whether you've breached the mandate Whether you're in an area that you're not allowed to invest in or whatever How much leverage you have on if you have leverage all of these things are in this infrastructure Build out that's been around for decades on top of the compliance department Is now an esg compliant department and an ethics department And so the reason none of these funds, you know people are so excited about bitcoin and say oh, this is amazing And we're sitting at 40 plus thousand dollars the truth is The majority of the world's managed money Trillions and trillions of dollars has this much bitcoin Zero and they're never going to put it on their balance sheets until they get the regulatory environment To give them the rules Then the compliance department to say okay, then the esg committee to say okay and the ethics committee to say okay, so They don't want coin that's mined in china for example because it burned coal That's the esg guys coming in and weighing in so This is forcing a change It's not changing the nature of a coin that's awarded But people want to know the providence of the coin Which is why these new age miners the norway project the bits zeros all of these other companies that are going with 100 percent green hydro They're very coveted their shares are going to be very coveted as they come onto the public market Because now these sovereign plans can buy the shares of these companies They pass esg mandates. They pass compliance mandates on ethics and they are an equity So they're going to be able to be held within one of the broader mandates So there's a tremendous amount of capital funding these new miners and that will be the proxy for exposure until The sec and the other regulators in the u.s. Which pretty well most regulators around the world abide by That that etf you talked about is actually it was an issue an order from the osc in canada Which is one of the most advanced they were the first to bring an etf that had the underlying being bitcoin But they also brought an etf that had the underlying ethereum And the policy up in canada is they also issued the very first crypto exchange with a broker dealer attached They're very advanced But my thesis this is a personal opinion is that the sec has a very close relationship with the osc in canada They their policies are almost identical. They're probably using ontario and canada as a guinea pig to try these policies, right? And if they work they'll use some of these maybe in the united states Which we hope but i'm very bullish that policy is coming because you've seen bills coming from Senator lumis and we've also got the same from hagerty You know there's all kinds of to me was on cnbc this morning talking about Stable coin the hagerty Bill is a two-page bill that contemplates stable coins So there's a lot of momentum on the regulatory side that i'm very excited about Well as a resident of ontario i can tell you that the sky is not falling because we have a bitcoin etf so There's really not much to be afraid of everyone, right? Um, so we talked about bitcoin and the bitcoin mining are there any other sectors within crypto that you're really excited about? Is it the defi space any other investments that you're really looking into maybe a thematic investment? Potential that you look at within crypto. Yeah, i'm very very interested in as an investment thesis And this is not only in canada but globally show me the jurisdictions that are issuing crypto exchange licenses Because that's the infrastructure of crypto forever And so ua united arid emirates particularly abu dhabi Um brazil argentina switzerland the uk I'm using a vehicle called wonder fi a company that's a canadian company They own the largest crypto exchange in canada. They bought bit by They're looking at other opportunities all over the world i assume That's what the management You know has said to the market and i'm very interested in you know investing in that because i'm hoping what they're going to Do is a roll-up of exchanges globally and what better place in canada because canada has been so Commodive on issuing the very first crypto license the other area that really intrigues me And and what i like about wonder fi is they have both centralized wallets and decentralized So where they're allowed to provide a decentralized wallet which That means when you when you acquire a customer they can keep both wallets active Maybe your nfts are in a decentralized and you're and you're keeping your coin in a centralized wallet for security reasons But the point is they have both I love infrastructure. So I also have a position in bit zero, which is you know also private but building the norway model That's infrastructure data centers in bitcoin mining They're they're looking at many opportunities around hydro stateside and then of course there's immutable holdings They're the infrastructure for nfts. They are they own nft.com I'm a shareholder jordan freed is the ceo there. These are all infrastructure plays That's that company again went public in canada. H.O.L.D. is the stock. So there you have it I mean, there's a lots of opportunity and within our operating companies portfolio now 20% is in crypto. That's the most I can hold I was going to ask you, you know, have you reached your 20%? I know you mentioned it last year. Have you reached the 20% Last year I was at seven seven So now i'm at 20 and now we and we have 32 positions on it's the most exciting part of my portfolio the most volatile I mean it's all over the map every day care to disclose what kind of assets you're holding I will I'll disclose some of them. Um, you know Part of this came through my relationship with ftx. I'm a shareholder in ftx As well as a paid spokesperson have to disclose that I I love what sam is building there You know and I use my ftx wallet obviously, but I'm I also own hbar I own polygon. I just put a position on in polygon after After you know meeting sandeep. I love his vision of reducing gas fees Particularly, you know for people that can't afford to to spend that much on eith But he's you know, he's aggregating transactions and passing through in one saving a ton of money. I love that idea Just got into helium Also avalanche Solana, I'm a big believer in that I've got I've got 32 aggregate positions. Those are some of the larger positions And so I don't know which one's going to win nobody knows But certainly, you know ethereum is too slow for me as a financial services guy So I you know, I'm looking I'm hoping that Solana ends up being something much faster It's got the backing of sam bank and freed, which is always a good thing But there's a lot of new ideas and I'll back any entrepreneur that has something of value I'm not so much on to the you know, for lack of a better word the shit coins I I want something to show economic potential to create value somewhere But it doesn't mean you can't have fun with crypto, you know, if you want to trade some dogecoin great doge along mars and stuff like that That's all fun. It's like going to las vegas. Yeah Some healthy speculation isn't too bad, right? Yeah, and I'm also very very interested in seeing policy come through on stablecoins because in many of my operating companies We have large cash positions We're making 22 basis points if I can lend out a contract for 30 days at 4% on You know usdc or whatever you there's many ways to go on stablecoins But we really need policy there because my auditors in my compliance departments will not let me put on a significant position on stable Well, you've got to think that market is really ripe for for growth given the yields that you can earn just by holding Stables compared to the yields have come down over the last three months because we're past 100 billion But it's still better and and I think why it should be Standardized as policy is it allows the u.s. Dollar to remain The you know the default currency globally and you want that and I'd like to do a lot of the work I do in Europe on usdc and just not have to go through fx transactions all the time But we need regulators to approve that but we're in neocent days. We're early days, but I'm extremely optimistic Excellent Kevin appreciate your time It's a sam with coin telegraph. It was great to talk to kevin oliri and uh, we'll continue the conversation