The investor says in a new interview on the Scott Melker podcast that he came to the realisation that digital assets are more software than currency, and this had prompted him to allocate funds to a diverse array of altcoins.
Some of O’Leary’s favourite projects include smart contract platform Solana (SOL), Ethereum scaling solution Polygon (MATIC), high-speed cryptocurrency network Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR), decentralised exchange (DEX) Serum (SRM), and Internet of Things-focused network Helium (HNT).
“I believe [crypto] is going to become the 12th sector of the economy at some point. It’s going to take 10 years or whatever, but I look at it and say to myself it’s all software innovation. Bitcoin is not a coin, it’s software…
So I look at it and say I should have a lot of bets, I’m very fortunate [that] I meet all these development teams all over the world and I can invest in them privately. I just put a big whack of cash at Polygon… HBAR, I’m in there, Solana, Serum, Helium, I mean I got 32 positions.”
Given that most blockchains cannot currently scale to global adoption without additional technology, O’Leary believes that high-throughput chains like Solana and layer-2 solutions like Polygon have enormous potential.
“That’s where you start to make a bet on Solana, where you can get a 100x productivity…
At this point, I really start to think about this as financial services productivity so in a way I’m doing a lot of private equity in it.
When I invest in a private position in Polygon, it’s a long-term investment thinking that’s going to be a way to reduce gas fees on Ethereum which I think it is. So for me, these are innovations worth investing in.”