Kevin O’Leary’s safest bet in crypto barely moves. The “Shark Tank” investor said stablecoins are the least risky part of the market right now, ranking them ahead of Bitcoin (BTC) and every other token.
His reasons are clearer regulation and guarantees provided by the U.S. Treasury. He said those put stablecoins in a much lower risk tier than Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Three tiers of crypto risk
O’Leary, the Canadian billionaire known as “Mr. Wonderful,” recently posted on X to sort crypto assets by volatility, regulation and adoption prospects. He split the industry into three groups.
“Everybody knows crypto is volatile, but crypto is different things,” O’Leary said.
Stablecoins came first. “You would call stablecoins the safest right now,” he said, pointing to the GENIUS Act, which set up federal rules for payment stablecoins in the United States.
“It’s really digital money,” O’Leary said.
The law behind his pick
The GENIUS Act was enacted in July 2025. It requires stablecoin issuers covered by the act to hold reserves made up of eligible liquid assets.
That doesn’t make stablecoins risk-free. A stablecoin is supposed to hold a relatively stable price, but how safe one is still depends on the quality of its reserves, who issues it and its redemption terms. Picking “stablecoins” as a category skips those details, and they decide whether a given coin holds up.
Bitcoin gets its own bucket
O’Leary put Bitcoin in a separate category and called it much more volatile than the others.
“A little more risky and a lot more volatile is, of course, Bitcoin,” he said.
He still calls Bitcoin a speculative asset. He also said regulatory concerns are holding back institutional adoption of the largest cryptocurrency, at least for now.
His example was the CLARITY Act, which hasn’t become law. The bill took a significant defeat in September when it failed to pass in the Senate. As long as that bill is stuck, the institutional money he expects for Bitcoin stays on the sidelines.
Ethereum is judged like software
The third group covers Ethereum (ETH) and other blockchain tokens. O’Leary compared blockchain technology to enterprise software and said adoption is what these tokens have to prove.
Put plainly, his ranking follows the paperwork. Stablecoins have a federal law behind them. Bitcoin is waiting on a bill that failed in the Senate in September. Ethereum and other tokens have to win users the way enterprise software does.
