Kevin O’Leary Drags Bitcoin onto Anti-China Bandwagon

Shark Tank celebrity and investor combines environmentalism and growing anti-China sentiments into a new benchmark for Bitcoin. The question is, if something is impossible to implement, why even say it?

Anti-China Sentiment on the Rise

After decades of heavy investment into its economy, China has become the favorite chewing toy for the political and media class in the US. Former President Trump’s official kickoff of the tariff wars in August 2019 was the tipping point for the China-US relationship reversal. This resulted in a briefly reduced trading volume, later exacerbated by lockdowns.

Soon after, China rapidly ditched the lockdowns while the West embraced them despite certain evidence suggesting harmful effects. As a result, China forged ahead with the highest GDP in the world, forecasted by the IMF to reach 7.9% in 2021. Thanks to the stimulus boost, the US is now closing behind with an upgraded forecast of 6.5% GDP growth for 2021, according to BofA.

This is likely why Elon Musk is pushing Tesla deployment in China, which had already surpassed estimates for Q1.

Although it is difficult to gauge which country engages in more intense mass censorship, many argue that both China and the US run a form of state capitalism. The key difference seems to be a cultural one – China is oriented inwardly, emphasizing traditional values. This cultural contrast makes for the easy onboarding of Western celebrities.

Kevin O’Leary Establishes China Benchmark for Bitcoin

Canadian celebrity investor and head of O’Shares ETFs, Kevin O’Leary (“Mr. Wonderful”) has entrenched himself in the public consciousness with ABC’s Shark Tank business reality show. The Tokenist had previously covered his U-turn on Bitcoin, announcing he would make it 3% of his investment portfolio.

Interestingly, that article also covered Bitcoin’s electricity expenditure and how this impacts Bitcoin’s public reception. Today, O’Leary stepped up his virtue-signaling game further. Not only does Bitcoin have to be mined sustainably but it also has to be free of blood. To CNBC’s Capital Connection, he made this distinction clear.

“I see over the next year or two, two kinds of coin,”…“Blood coin from China, (and) clean coin mined sustainably in countries that use hydroelectricity, not coal.”

Although it is April, it is not April 1^st, so it is not quite clear how people would differentiate between clean and dirty Bitcoins, let alone between bloody and pure Bitcoins. It seems that his reversal from Bitcoin as “garbage” and “digital game” has caused some upset in his social circles.

On the same show, O’Leary also used the opportunity to go all out on China, urging authorities to economically isolate the emerging Asian superpower.

“Maybe … really, at the height of this, delist their stocks off exchanges in America, stop them from getting access to the courts because we don’t have access to theirs,”

O’Leary pointed that such aggressive measures would be needed to create the same conditions for American companies in the Chinese market that exist for Chinese companies in the US market. Under the guidance of Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department, the NYSE had already delisted three Chinese telecom companies this year – China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.

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