Professional Investor and CNBC Contributor Jon Najarian Talks About Bitcoin

In a recent interview, former NFL player, professional investor, financial markets analyst, and a CNBC contributor Jon Najarian talked about how he invests in crypto (and especially Bitcoin) for his personal portfolio.

According to his CNBC bio, Najarian was a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, one of the teams in the National Football League (NFL), which is a professional American football league consisting of 32 teams, before becoming a professional options trader.

As a member of CBOE, NYSE, CME and CBOT, he ended up working for around 25 years as a floor trader.

In 2005, together with his brother Pete, founded optionMONSTER, an options news and education firm, and tradeMONSTER, an online brokerage firm. In 2016, TradeMonster was sold to E*Trade for $750 million.

He is also a co-founder of Najarian Advisors & Najarian Family Office, which “advises or trades for institutional investors and provides money management for wealthy investors.”

In 2016, Jon and Pete Najarian founded Market Rebellion, which has the aim of educating the individual investor.

In an interview with Anthony Pompliano (aka “Pomp”)—for episode #329 of the Pomp Podcast—Najarian talked about Wall Street, as well as crypto in general, and Bitcoin in particular.

With regard to how he invests in crypto, he said:

“On a monthly basis, I probably have between 5% and 10% in digital assets, and almost all of it is Bitcoin. A little Ethereum, but mostly Bitcoin. I’ve got a little Litecoin, a little Stellar, but really I’m about Bitcoin. I’m there because guys like yourself, guys like Peter Briger over at Fortress, really got me psyched about it…

“I first got involved at about $300, realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, didn’t get involved again until it was closer to $1,700. So I missed an awful lot of that and I didn’t sell when it got over $18,000 or $19,000. I didn’t liquidate. I would have looked like a genius if I did.”

Najarian says that Wall Street players are secretly increasing their Bitcoin holdings:

“I think a lot of them will want to keep it quiet as they’re getting in, because they’ll run it. I don’t mean that they’ll run in terms of how [Bitcoin] operates. I mean they’ll push the price too far too fast.

“So the exact same guys that know that you don’t want Goldman knowing that you’re buying FireEye or Uber or Microsoft, because they’ll run it ahead of you.

“Those same guys are sitting there thinking I really like this play in Bitcoin here, but I’m not going to say a lot about it until I’ve got enough of this stuff, because we both know that blocks of it stand out and so they’ve got to stay under the radar with these accumulations.”

Najarian is confident about the long-term future of Bitcoin:

“I think it’s still just got a foothold that’s this big compared to everything else, compared to gold, compared to stocks, compared to futures… It hasn’t hurt the dollar yet, but eventually what we’re doing is going to hurt the dollar and it’s going to hurt my kids.

“It’s going to hurt for years out into the future, all this printing of additional capital. And that’s what I love about digital assets like Bitcoin.”

One example of the big-name Wall Street players who have been quietly investing in Bitcoin is American billionaire businessman and hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, who is the Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Avenue Capital Group, as well as the co-owner of Milwaukee Bucks, one of the 30 teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which is an American men’s professional basketball league. 

Lasry told CNBC show “Squawk Box” during an interview on 18 July 2018 that he had invested “around 1%” of his personal fortune in Bitcoin.

Lasry said that he had got into Bitcoin “a few years ago” (so that could have been around 2013-2014), but he “bought a lot more” in “the last year” (i.e. 2017–2018) when the average price for Bitcoin was $5,000 to $7,500.

Lasery went on to say that he is hoping that as Bitcoin “gets more into the mainstream and as more markets end up allowing it to trade where it’s freely tradable,” the price could reach “$20,000 to $40,000.”

Finally, he said that the reason he likes Bitcoin is because “it’s the one where everybody’s going to come to” and this means that Bitcoin is going to be “the one that’s going to have the biggest market benefit.” 

Featured Image by “WorldSpectrum” via Pixabay.com