Kevin O’Leary says Wall Street’s tokenization boom is all talk without crypto rules

O’Leary says institutional investors still see tokenization as too risky without clear U.S. crypto regulation and compliance standards. What to know : Kevin O’Leary told the Consensus conference in Miami that tokenization and bitcoin will remain largely off-limits to major institutional investors until Congress passes clear, comprehensive digital-asset regulation. He argued that Wall Street’s experiments with tokenization are mostly hype without legal certainty, pointing to the rapid uptake of stablecoins after the GENIUS Act as evidence that clear rules can unlock adoption. O’Leary said institutional interest has consolidated around bitcoin and ether while many smaller tokens have been “slaughtered,” and he contended that the real long-term value lies in blockchain infrastructure, corporate adoption and the energy and data centers that power digital assets.