Carl Icahn Bullish Ethereum, May Invest $1.5B in Crypto

Carl Icahn is weighing up a big investment in the cryptocurrency space. 

Carl Icahn Talks Crypto 

Billionaire investor and former crypto skeptic Carl Icahn is considering buying into cryptocurrencies. 

Speaking to Bloomberg TV Thursday, the 85-year-old businessman conceded that there “could be something” to the crypto space. Icahn also remarked on the inflation of fiat currencies during the discussion. “We’re a reserve currency now, but if you keep printing the money, it’s not gonna be there,” he said in reference to the U.S. dollar. 

He revealed that he thinks the two leading cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, represent stores of value. He also suggested that he was particularly bullish on Ethereum owing to the utility of the network. He said: 

 “Ethereum has two things: you can use it as a payment system and you can use it as a store of value.” 

He added that critics often say that cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, but that the same argument could be made about traditional money. “The only value of the dollar, really, is that you can use it to pay taxes.” 

He went on to say that he was looking into the space and that he “might get involved in it in a relatively big way.” When the interviewers pressed him on what “a relatively big way” could mean, he suggested that he could invest up to $1.5 billion through his company Icahn Enterprises, though also added that he’s “not looking at what to buy necessarily” at the moment.  

Although Icahn left no hints at where he may invest, his comments suggest that he’s studied Bitcoin and Ethereum to some degree. Only a few institutional investors have publicly made a crypto investment of more than $1 billion to date, including MicroStrategy and Tesla. Both of those firms invested in Bitcoin, though signs suggest that big players have started to notice Ethereum’s value proposition in recent months. 

Icahn has vocally opposed crypto in the past, at one point comparing the space to the Mississippi Bubble that caused a financial collapse in France. That stance seems to have changed now, though. He told Bloomberg that he sees a future in cryptocurrencies, adding that many projects may not survive on a long-term basis. “I do think it’s here to stay in one form or another,” he said. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH, ETH2X-FLI, and several other cryptocurrencies.