“We’ve got to get away from this speculative price of an asset here,” he told Lau. “We’ve got to find reasons that this [technology] gets embedded into the economy.”
The Canadian entrepreneur said he recently became a citizen of the United Arab Emirates to “work freely” in a region that has attracted investment by some of crypto’s heaviest hitters, including exchanges FTX, Binance and Crypto.com.
O’Leary is a vocal proponent of Web3 technology as a spokesperson for cryptocurrency exchange FTX and an investor in financial technology company Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin and the organiser of the Converge22 conference.
Cryptocurrencies have yet to emerge from a prolonged market slump since the US$40 billion collapse of the Terra-LUNA token and stablecoin in May, an event that prompted regulators worldwide to focus on drawing up rules for the developing industry.
“Now, remaining players are being strengthened by the fact they’re still in business,” O’Leary said. “They’re able to raise capital.”