Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary believes the recent arrest of the alleged creator of the coin mixing service Tornado Cash is a necessary sacrifice toward a more controlled crypto market.
The venture capitalist claims that Tornado Cash and such businesses are a part of a “crypto cowboy” attitude that he believes has no place in the sector during a panel discussion on Crypto Banter.
“At the end of the day, it’s okay to arrest that guy. Why? He’s messing with the primal forces of regulation. Maybe he feels he’s a crypto cowboy, but he just got a whole bunch of arrows in his back. If we have to sacrifice him, that’s okay, because we want to have some stability in that institutional capital. That’s what we’ve been saying…
And I think we’re getting to that stage now. Maybe we’re in the third or fourth inning towards that, but I’m tired of this crypto cowboy crap. I want to get involved in a regulated place where we can bring billions of dollars to work. I don’t need to be a crypto cowboy, and I don’t want to be one because I work in the regulated world. I’m tired of that narrative.
Now when you go to Bitcoin 2022 and certainly 2023, the first day they had to open up… just for institutional interest even though none of them owned any Bitcoin. They had 1,500 institutions at the keynote there. I mean it was unbelievable the interest, but they’re not going to touch it while the crypto cowboys are riding the fence. We got to get rid of this crap.”
The alleged creator of the open-source, Ethereum-based mixing service was detained last week in the Netherlands after claims by Dutch authorities that more than $7 billion has passed via Tornado Cash since its launch, with $1 billion of that amount being associated with illegal activity.