Bill Ackman, a major hedge fund manager and billionaire, has doubled down on his support for cryptocurrencies. In a recent Twitter thread, he backed crypto amid the ongoing FTX crypto crash.
The Pershing Square Capital Management founder said in his 20 November tweets that “crypto is here to stay,” despite the bankruptcy of FTX and subsequent collapse of firms linked to the troubled exchange.
He also called for tighter regulations and for removing “fraudulent actors” in the industry.
To be clear, I am not advocating for any particular crypto project. Rather, I am making the case that crypto can facilitate potentially useful and important businesses that heretofore could not exist. That said, the success of any individual project is a function of the ultimate https://t.co/SvpQMHrt0y
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 20, 2022
He added: “I think crypto is here to stay and with proper oversight and regulation, it has the potential to greatly benefit society and grow the global economy.”
Despite difficulties in the market, he said that cryptocurrencies would improve their fraud prevention capabilities, adding: “The problem with crypto is that unethical promoters can create tokens simply to facilitate pump and dump schemes. It may in fact be that the vast majority of crypto coins are used for fraudulent purposes rather than for building legitimate businesses.”
To crack down on “fraudulent actors,” he urged incentivisation for “legitimate” crypto investors to expose and tackle “fraudulent” cryptocurrency investors increasing potential regulatory intervention “that will set back the positive potential impact of crypto for generations.”
Speaking further, he said: “I was initially a crypto skeptic [but] I have come to believe that crypto can enable the formation of useful businesses and technologies that [before now] could not be created. The ability to issue a token to incentivize participants in a venture is a powerful lever in accessing a global workforce to advance a project.”
The comments come after Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapsed in November due to a massive liquidity crisis and subsequent liquidation of FTX’s native token, FTT, on rival firm Binance. This triggered a huge bank run, with millions of clients losing their funds on the bankrupt platform amid the turmoil.
