Bill Ackman: Crypto is ‘here to stay’

Bill Ackman, a prominent hedge fund manager and billionaire investor, now says cryptocurrency is “here to stay” and that the industry’s potential to be beneficial to society could be comparable to the impact of the internet and the telephone.

Ackman, the founder and CEO of hedge fund firm Pershing Square Capital Management, also went on to reveal some of his current crypto investments, including Helium, Goldfinch Finance and ORIGYN.

In a Twitter thread posted early Monday, Ackman said:

“I was initially a crypto skeptic, but after studying some of the more interesting crypto projects, I have come to believe that crypto can enable the formation of useful businesses and technologies that heretofore could not be created.”

Ackman says ‘crypto is here to stay’

According to the billionaire investor, crypto has and may continue to suffer from unethical promoters whose goal is to perpetuate “pump and dump schemes”.

He suggests that indeed most projects could be fraudulent, with their native tokens providing nothing in the way of legitimate businesses.

Although his early outlook of crypto was that tokens did not offer any intrinsic value, seeing them as a “modern-day version of tulip mania”, that perspective has changed. He now thinks crypto is firmly a part of the global economy.

“I think crypto is here to stay and with proper oversight and regulation, it has the potential to greatly benefit society and grow the global economy.”

Ackman also believes proper regulation can help bring out the best of crypto, with the impact comparable to what the telephone and the internet have achieved so far.

“Despite crypto’s ability to facilitate fraud, with the benefit of sensible regulation and oversight, crypto technology’s potential for beneficent societal impact may eventually compare with the impact of the telephone and internet on the economy and society.”

An example of positive crypto impact is what’s being achieved by the team at Helium.

As a result, over time, a two-sided market for HNT develops in which miners buy hotspots and deploy them around the globe to earn tokens. Users, in turn, purchase HNT tokens in order to use the network. The more demand for the network, the more demand for HNT.

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 20, 2022

Ackman also suggests a lot of good out of crypto is also possible if all legitimate participants within the industry get properly incentivized to expose unethical players.

If that doesn’t happen, the billionaire believes it could lead to regulatory interventions that end up setting the whole ecosystem back for generations.

The crypto ecosystem recently got hit by crypto exchange FTX’s collapse and its native token’s crash. After the implosion, observers have pointed to the unfortunate events as potentially very damaging for crypto. However, there’s also belief that it’s these turbulent events that might have to be navigated if crypto is establish itself in the global economy.