- Citadel founder Ken Griffin admitted to softening his stance on cryptocurrencies.
- "I haven't been right on this call over the last 15 years," he told Bloomberg Wednesday.
- Citadel, the largest US market maker, could be involved in digital assets in the coming months, he said.
Citadel Securities' founder Ken Griffin admitted to changing his anti-cryptocurrency stance by saying he was wrong in trashing them, and said his firm could soon be market-making for digital assets.
"Crypto has been one of the great, great stories in finance over the course of roughly the last 15 years and, I'll be clear, I've been in the naysayer camp over that 15 year period," he told Bloomberg in a Wednesday interview.
"But the crypto markets today have a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers, which tells you that I haven't been right on this call over the last 15 years," he added.
Griffin, who has a net worth of just over $30 billion, said while he still has doubts, the growing number of crypto advocates have made him want to explore the industry through Citadel, the largest US market maker.
"I still have my skepticism," he said. "But there are hundreds of millions of people in this world today who disagree with that."
Citadel is trying to enable institutions and investors to solve their portfolio allocation problems, so it's seriously considering being a market maker in cryptocurrencies, he said.
"And I think it's fair to assume that over the months to come, you will see us engage in making markets in cryptocurrencies," Griffin added.
As recently as October last year, he had criticized crypto cheerleaders by saying their efforts are a "jihadist call" against the dollar. "What a crazy concept this is, that we as a country embrace so many bright, young, talented people to come up with a replacement for our reserve currency," he had said at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In November 2017, Griffin compared bitcoin to the tulip bubble mania, and said he was more intrigued by blockchain technology.
Cryptocurrencies have rapidly garnered mainstream attention in the last two years, with the total market cap hitting $2 trillion in August 2021. The overall market value of digital assets stood only slightly lower at $1.9 trillion at last check Friday, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, has not only been touted as digital gold, but also as a hedge against inflation and global uncertainty, such as the current war in Ukraine.
"Seeing the collapse of the ruble, it appears that bitcoin is increasingly seen as a safe haven for storing wealth, in part because the bitcoin network is controlled by no one government or company," Brendan Playford, CEO and founder of Masa Finance, said.
"It's purely a decentralized, permissionless system – apolitical and available to almost all who have access to the internet," he added.