Billionaire David Rubenstein: ’Crypto Is Not Going To Go Away’

David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder and co-chairman of private equity firm Carlyle Group, says that the crypto industry is not going to go away.

Rubenstein made his commens about cryptocurrency during a chat with Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin at the University Club of Chicago on September 22.

When asked what he thinks about cryptocurrencies, Rubenstein replied:

“Well, if you go to Las Vegas and you gamble because you like gambling, it just gives you pleasure the way other things give you pleasure. Playing golf might give you pleasure. If you get pleasure out of it, you allocate a certain amount of your net worth and say ‘I am going to take one or two percent of my net worth, I am going to lose it in Las Vegas’.

“And if you win the first day and you win the second day, you think you’re really a genius and you’re going to win money, but eventually you’re going to lose. So, if it gives you pleasure to do the gambling, allocate enough money that you can afford to lose. So, with crypto that was my view for some time. If you get pleasure by watching the screens all day and saying you’ve just made a lot of money in crypto and so forth, allocated enough so if you lose it it’s not the end of the earth.

“I now think that crypto is not going to go away the way some people have thought, and while you can argue it’s worthless in some respects, many things that people buy may be worthless.

“I would say that it’s clear that many people — and many have a libertarian view of life, or maybe a more conservative of life, and they tend to be liking this kind of thing. It’s anti-government. The government doesn’t control it. They want to have some of their assets and things that the government can’t control or know what they’re doing and increasingly they lobby Congress pretty effectively to keep Congress from over-regulating this industry, and I don’t think it will be over-regulated...

“Now, I have not invested in any cryptocurrencies but I have invested in my family through companies that service the industry because I think the industry is not going away anytime soon, and I can’t pick which of the 18,000 cryptocurrencies are going to work, but I think the industry is not going away…

“As a rule of thumb with some exceptions, if you follow what young people are doing, you’re probably going to see economic trends, follow. People who are in their 70s don’t usually start economic trends, really. People that got involved in internet kinds of things or smartphones or computers, they tend to be initially in their 20s and the people who often are very involved in crypto tend to be in their 20s or 30s in some cases.“

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