Mike Novogratz, CEO of digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital, told investors that he is surprised by the amount of regulatory attention being paid to cryptocurrency rather than artificial intelligence (AI), a technology he believes will cause a "deep fake" identity crisis.
The CEO explained during the company's fourth-quarter conference call on March 28 that the US government has it "completely backwards" by focusing so much on crypto regulation while ignoring AI: "When I think about AI, it amazes me that we're talking about crypto regulation but not AI regulation." I mean, I think the government has it completely backwards."
Novogratz appeared to be concerned that AI would cause a "deep fake" identity crisis.
"In many ways, one of the best use cases for crypto is going to be identity around AI, because you're going to get a fake pretty soon." "How do you prove identity in a world like that?" said Mike Novogratz, hopefully with hair.
However, he believes blockchain-based applications will play a "huge role" in addressing some of AI's issues: "Crypto and blockchain will play a significant role in this." We should not cache this industry because of Sam Bankman-Fried in his Bermuda shorts, period."
However, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently met with the Technology Advisory Committee to discuss AI and its implications.
Regarding the current state of the market, Novogratz stated that "seller exhaustion" and the reopening of China have aided the crypto industry's remarkable recovery thus far in 2023.
"All of the selling that needed to be done, right?" If you had to sell, there was so much bad news, panic selling, and just the nervousness of "Oh my God! This thing could go to zero," he said, "and people were in complete panic, you had seller's exhaustion."
Following the Chinese government's tough zero-COVID policy, Novogratz has noticed an increase in crypto activity coming out of China. "China removed the regulatory boot from their tech companies' necks, including crypto, [so] you're seeing more activity from Asia."
From a technical standpoint, Novogratz is confident that the cryptocurrency market will continue to rise throughout the rest of 2023: "The market feels strong, and when I look at the charts, I see big weekly closes." Given where I was in late December, I'm surprised to hear myself say this, but it wouldn't surprise me if we were significantly higher three, six, or nine months from now."
The strong recovery in the crypto market reflected well on Galaxy's balance sheet as well, with the company revealing today in its quarterly results that it has finally returned to profit after a $1 billion loss in 2022.