Kevin O’Leary is a millionaire and big name in the investment world. You may know him from the American program Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs can pitch an idea and rich people like O’Leary may step in. The investment legend was associated with FTX as a representative and therefore received 15 million dollars for it.
Strange world
It remains a strange perception that figures like O’Leary let themselves be bought by a platform like FTX and that there are no consequences for them. You could say that O’Leary is also responsible for the damage people suffered as a result of the collapse of the stock exchange platform. By ‘being behind the platform’ he probably moved a lot of people to sign up with FTX.
Now he’s trying to calm things down a bit claiming that he has lost that $15 million. “In total, it was just under $15 million, […] I put about $9.7 million of that into crypto. I think I lost that. It’s all worth nothing anymore,” said the millionaire. “It was not a good investment […] I don’t just make good investments. Luckily I do more good than bad, but this was a bad one,” he added.
Bad investment or deal with it?
It’s clear that O’Leary is trying to play the “I’m pathetic” card a bit here. In principle, he has not lost any of his own money here. The only thing he loses here is his reputation, because he sent people to a platform that was not safe. The only way it would be ‘ok’ is if it turns out that he actually had large amounts of his own money in the platform. Now it was just a risk-free ‘investment’ for him, because it was money received.
Of course, this also explains how FTX managed to attract all those sponsors. They probably also used the money for O’Leary to bind other stars. If it was there at all. We don’t have to worry about O’Leary, though. The net worth of the 68-year-old investor is still estimated at $ 400 million.