Millionaire investor Kevin O’Leary says stablecoins may matter more than Bitcoin when it comes to real-world finance — and he sees a major upside for whichever layer-1 blockchain captures TradFi’s migration on-chain.
O’Leary told FOX (shared on X) that Bitcoin remains a speculative, highly volatile asset, useful as “digital gold.” But he argued stablecoins are a different beast: they’re pegged to cash-equivalents (many backed by U.S. Treasury bills), settle in seconds instead of days, and can move value for a fraction of the cost of traditional bank rails like FedWire. Those features, he says, make stablecoins a compelling payments and financial-services product with concrete real-world utility.
Even so, O’Leary is still a Bitcoin bull — he recently pared his crypto exposure down to just Bitcoin and Ethereum, citing a regulatory shift and institutional reassessment that led him to consolidate holdings.
Beyond payments, O’Leary highlighted a broader opportunity for crypto networks as established finance goes on-chain. He pointed to forecasts that big corporates — including those in the S&P 500 — could start using blockchains for contract automation, inventory tracking and logistics. Which layer-1 wins that business is unclear, he said: no one yet knows which blockchain these firms will standardize on.
Data currently points to Ethereum as the frontrunner in tokenizing real-world assets (RWA). According to RWA.xyz, Ethereum captures about 67% of the tokenized-asset market and hosts roughly $18.6 billion in RWAs (excluding stablecoins). Institutional activity to date has favored Ethereum and newer layer-1s, while Bitcoin has lagged in RWA tokenization.
Bottom line: O’Leary sees stablecoins as a practical driver of on-chain finance — faster, cheaper and more bank-like because of Treasury backing — while the real strategic prize will go to the layer-1 network that becomes the industry standard for TradFi’s on-chain transition.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
