Until recently, hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen was sceptical about cryptocurrencies.
Then his son, a "cryptocurrency fanatic", changed his mind.
"he really convinced me that this is what I need to do," the founder of hedge fund firm Point72 Asset Management said at the SALT meeting on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.
"once I decided there was an opportunity, I thought it could be a space as big as the Internet-it could be an incredible change-and I wouldn't miss it," Cohen said in a discussion entitled "creating Alpha in Markets and Baseball" in New York.
He has since dabbled in the cryptocurrency world as an individual and a company. Cohen, 65, has a net worth of $11.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires list.
"distant thoughts"
His interest in the virtual world is not limited to cryptocurrencies: Cohen also expresses his fascination with a meta-universe that interacts with virtual characters.
"there are some distant ideas about how people spend their time," he said. "your mind may go crazy," he added, adding how people will interact in a virtual universe and may buy virtual real estate and virtual clothes.