Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures, joins Remy Blaire to break down gold’s sharp rebound above $5,000, Bitcoin’s slide below $74,000, and what the volatility signals for investors.
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Remy: Let's get to the big story breakdown. Gold staging a dramatic reversal back above the $5,000 level this morning. But this does come after surging more than 6% after a brutal sell off. After hitting a low of $4,400, the latest jump is the largest single day percentage gain since March 2009. And as for Bitcoin, the crypto major plummeting below $74,000, wiping out all the gains made since election night. Now Bitcoin is down over 10% this year in derivatives data showing traders betting on further declines, open interest collapsing and also bearish pressure surging.
While joining me to weigh in on gold and crypto this morning is Kevin O'Leary, chairman of O'Leary ventures. Kevin great to have you back on. So. 2026 has been quite the year so far. Quite the roller coaster ride. So what is behind the wild swings we're seeing at gold, Bitcoin and even in individual names so far?
Kevin: Well let's start with the decline in crypto overall and of course, Bitcoin being the granddaddy. As of October 20th, it really started last year when institutional investors figured out they only needed to own two positions to capture 97% of the entire returns of the crypto market. And so what we now know is that the rest of these 10,000 tokens When they did their corrections, some of them as much as 80%. They never recovered. Bitcoin came back a little bit obviously, and so did Ethereum. But what outshone both of them was the 2000 plus year old commodity gold, which has since 2000 beat the market multiple times. And what people are starting to realize is there is definitely a difference between crypto, which is 16 years old, versus gold, which is over 2000 years old as a as a investable commodity, and they returned to that space in a big way. it is outperformed pretty well everything, including the S&P in 2025.
And so it really goes to show you that diversification is your friend. And waiting in gold up to 5% of your portfolio or in some people's case is 20% has not been a bad thing.
Remy: Yeah. And Kevin, you know, they say age is just a number here. But when you put it that way in terms of how old gold is versus Bitcoin, it does put things into perspective. I don't know if you have a pair of boxing gloves, but I do want to bring in other perspectives here. So Michael Burry, best known as the Big Short Investor, warns that Bitcoin's weak foundations are forcing investors to sell $1 billion in gold to cover losses, with minor bankruptcies likely if prices do hit $50,000. And conversely, Cathie Wood of Ark argues that Bitcoin's low correlation to gold makes it a vital diversify to where gold rallies actually signal an upcoming Bitcoin surge. So what are your take on their opinions and what's unfolding?
Kevin: Well, in some ways, and I have a lot of respect for Cathie Woods. I mean, she's talking about diversification, which is important. But you know, in the last few quarters and actually last six months, really, we had all of these treasury offerings that were built around one token or another. If you were an investor in those, you've been slaughtered. It's just been brutal because they don't really have a business model. You can buy the commodity itself, whether it be ETH or Bitcoin. The thing about gold, again, versus it, you know, against diversification is a lot of people don't know how to own gold. They, you know, even though it's been around forever. Do you own the physical gold. Do you buy the GLD, which is an ETF which has a promise of owning the physical gold somewhere? And what I've learned over decades of investing in gold, it's best to do both. Have some relationship with somebody where you can buy physical gold. And I've chosen Universal Coin. I mean, they've been for me. I mean, I'll be disclosing I'm a paid spokesperson. But the guy there, Mike Fuljenz, has been the gold guy in America forever. So I buy gold tokens in the sense that they're coins, and I have them when I travel. I actually carry a roll of them because I know this sounds crazy, but when you go all over the world and you run into a situation where maybe there's weather problems or you get stuck somewhere, small gold coins are actually a currency everywhere on Earth, and I've used them before that way. And it's funny you bring this up because of late, owning gold in coin format has actually been a good thing. Some of the coins I own have historical value, so they trade as collectibles, but I got all this stuff from Universal Coin Bullion. And also, I don't know if you've noticed what happened with silver. Silver is actually part of the AI revolution, and I own that too. That's been very, very good, very, very volatile. But the same way I can buy it from Universal Coin. So to me, what I've learned and everybody's learned on this crypto meltdown is you may still have a positive view on crypto, and I do, but it has certainly underperformed gold. And I think this is a lesson everybody's going to learn. And today, this morning is you know, crypto continues to melt. Gold performs. It's sort of old school all of a sudden coming back to haunt you. You know what I mean?
Remy: Yeah. So, Kevin, you know, you mentioned silver as well as golden. I don't carry around gold coins or silver coins, but if I did have any. I'd probably put it in my Labubu backpack as I travel around the world. But I do want to focus on what we saw in terms of the selloff in software names yesterday, massive sell offs and names that triggered the sector bloodbath. at the same time, we have to keep in mind all the volatility we've seen across all sectors.
UnitedHealth crashed 20% in late January after forecasting its first revenue decline in over 20 years, and this also came on weak 2026 guidance and also disappointing Medicare Advantage rate proposals for 2027 And we can't forget about Microsoft beating earnings expectations last week. But shares cratering with the massive selloff wiping out about $360 billion in market value in a single trading session. And yesterday those software stocks selling off on concerns about competition on Anthropic gen AI tools. So what do you make of this volatility and the massive sell offs in individual names?
Kevin: Well, it's a, I think a cleansing correction. It's not unhealthy to have this occur. Volatility in tech is driven by the high price earnings ratios which they enjoy above every other sector of the S&P 500. So you're going to get more involved there for sure. The better check, in terms of the value, is has anything changed in the last two weeks regarding the demand for AI? I would argue the one thing that has changed that have so much scrutiny on these stocks is we never talked about power and the importance of power. Power on the grid to offer the energy, you're going to need to build all these data centers to keep competitive with the Chinese, which are, frankly, way ahead of us on power generation. And all of a sudden, since Davos, when Trump talked in his speech about accelerating path to permit. People started focusing on, okay, if we're going to be building 45 gigs of data facilities in the U.S. and there's only five under construction, and it affects all of the names you talked about, every one of those names is somehow tied to AI as being the reason they're trading at such crazy high PEs, because of the promise of AI, which still exists. sector of the economy is using it now.
All 11 sectors use AI, but the insatiable demand for AI compute is tied to power and there is no power. There's no extra power on the grid anymore. So all of a sudden, all of these data centers that have been announced over the last two years, people are starting to say, wait a second, half of these aren't going to get built because there's no power.
They were just hype. There's no power there. So unless you have a plan on how you're going to create power and the Chinese, in the last 12 months, they built 500 gigs of power, primarily around coal burning electrical generation. We built zero, so we're getting our heinies kicked. And all of this came into the mix and the narrative about these companies, how are they going to stay competitive? How are they going to grow? How are they going get the AI compute? Where are they going to get the, you know, any capacity to do this? Where are they going to get it from? And people are starting to question that. And then all of a sudden Elon Musk yesterday says we'll build it all in space. Of course that's wonderful. But that's 25 years from now. What about next year when the earnings of these companies are being forecasted to grow another 20-30%? If they don't get those AI data centers, that's not going to happen. And so now you're getting the scrutiny of power, as the story of is the narrative. I've really focused on this in the last two years.
Our group now has under control about 26,000 acres, uh, in North America, where there's either stranded nat gas or pipeline gas available at sub $0.06 a kilowatt hour. So my gamble, my bet is that this power issue continues to grow, as evidenced by this correction. And we better come up with some power solutions, and we better hope the administration delivers on what they said - permits in seven months, not seven years. So that's what's coming to the market in the last week that has got people concerned.
Remy: Yeah. And Kevin, while we're on the topic of energy and AI, I do want to ask you about Bitzero. So I understand that Bitzero is now adding new AI chips to its data center in Norway. And as the company diversifies into high performance compute. Tell me about the projected internal rate of revenue for this deployment, and what does it mean for the business model moving forward?
Kevin: Well, I don't know if you've noticed. I'm sure you have that. Most Bitcoin miners are shifting their strategies pretty quickly. They're no longer talking about Bitcoin mining for obvious reasons. They're talking about the ability to generate power. That was the plan with Bitzero from day one. Bitzero is a power company. All it has is great land, fantastic permits and sub $0.04 a kilowatt hour power in Norway and Finland. And so they don't care if you want to rent their space for my Bitcoin mining, ETH mining or, you know, cloud services or AI compute, what they deliver are permits, water, fiber, power and then any tenant can bid for it. And that's the new model. So my bet, and I was involved in that deal ever since it started in upstate New York and moved those facilities to Norway because they couldn't get permits. Permits are very hard to get. Luckily in Norway they have abundance of hydroelectric power and in Finland, nuclear power. So Bitzero enjoys all this sustainable clean power and has land contracts has operational facilities running right now. And so they are, you know, from the management's telling investors, I'm one of them, that they think there'll be a lot of interest from either cloud based compute tenants or AI inference or AI compute. They're agnostic. They're just basically saying if you need power at sub $0.06 a kilowatt hour, which everybody wants worldwide, and you want it in a stable place where the government provides permitting and stability. I mean, obviously you would love to build in hydroelectricity in Ukraine, except you'd have a Russian tank rolling over you.
So it really matters now that you find a place that's stable to build these data centers. And I think that's a good investment thesis going forward. And so what surprised everybody in the first few weeks of 2026 are two major themes, I would argue that shifted away from traditional crypto. One is gold. And we talked about that. The performer of all asset classes and number two is power. We don't say crypto anymore. We say power. And crypto is just a derivative software that requires power. And so I think the investment themes for this year that will perform for me anyway as I'm positioning is gold, goldbullion, gold coins. I talked about that. You can even put gold in your IRA now. Universal coin can do that too. So it's a long term investment, but power and gold, that's what I'm focused on.
Remy: Well, Kevin, speaking of power, before I let you go, I do want to get your take on alternative assets. So of course we talked about precious metals as well as crypto. But I know you are building a massive portfolio in trading cards. And last time we were talking we were talking about the Labubu bubble. But what's next? What's hot? What are you investing in?
Kevin: Well, it's interesting you bring that up because if you think about alternative asset classes, the best performers I have in my portfolio are gold, silver and vintage trading cards. You know, that may sound completely nuts, but you want diversification of asset class. What's occurring in the trading card market? Ever since we bought last August, the Jordan Kobe dual logo man for $12.93 million, that card's market value is over $17 million today. So. And we bought many, many others since then. It's no different than modern art in 1962. And that's how it's being traded. These cards are extremely rare. They have collectors all around the world, including Asia. It's a very, very, very, very finite market. And so I found that a safe haven for capital and this great liquidity. If I wanted to sell that Kobe Jordan jewel logo, man, I could. I could sell it in 15 minutes. So there's so much demand for these unique pieces. So it kind of is interesting and it teaches everybody a lesson. Certainly it's taught me. You want that diversification. I remember people thought I was nuts when I bought- I'm a third owner of that card. I don't think the people that were laughing then, I don't think they have any assets that are performed as well as that card has, unless they own gold, so I don't know. It kind of tells you that yes, there's volatility here to stay. Big themes do emerge. I mean, I think power is going to be the theme for the next three years.