Billionaire Carl Icahn has said he plans to enter the crypto market "in a big way" investing more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reports.
While Icahn has not yet purchased any cryptocurrency, he is studying Bitcoin, Ether and digital assets in general. In his opinion, the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies is a natural consequence of inflation in the economy. At the same time, comments that cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value are "little wrong-headed," he added:
"Well, what’s the value of a dollar? The only value of the dollar is because you can use it to pay taxes. I’m looking at the whole business, and how I might get involved in it. I'm not looking at what to buy necessarily at this time."
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to stay up to date on the latest crypto and blockchain news.
When comparing Bitcoin and Ether, Icahn has highlighted that the latter can play the role of a payment system and a store of value, while the possibilities of Bitcoin are limited to a store of value. At the same time, cryptos that cannot perform the function of a store of value will be forced to leave the market, as they will not be able to guarantee the reliability of investments, the billionaire has said:
"Much of the cryptocurrency issued today will not survive, but we believe cryptocurrency in one form or another might be here to stay. To be clear, we have never bought any cryptocurrency, but we are studying it."
When asked about what he means by big, Icahn said:
"I mean, a big way for us would be a billion dollars, billion-and-a-half dollars... I'm not going to say exactly."
Icahn believes that, among other things, the interest in cryptocurrencies is due to the "ridiculous prices" in the stock market.
According to Forbes, 85-year-old Icahn, who has worked as an advisor to Donald Trump's administration, has a fortune of $15.6 billion.