American multinational hedge fund and financial services company Citadel is poised to enter cryptocurrency markets this year.

Speaking
on Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein, Citadel founder Ken Griffin
commented on the current state of markets in light of recent
geopolitical conflicts stating that they are at a “very volatile
inflection point.”

When the interview turned to digital assets, Griffin who has previously warned the younger generation away from them and said “there’s no need for cryptocurrencies,” revealed that the firm would be engaging in crypto asset markets this year.

“It’s fair to assume that over the months to come, you will see us engage in making markets in cryptocurrencies.”

Its quite the turnaround from November 2017, when Griffin said:
“Bitcoin right now has many of the elements of the tulip bulb mania we
saw back hundreds of years ago in Holland.” At the time, when BTC was
trading around $10,000, he added “these bubbles tend to end in tears.
And I worry about how this bubble might end.”

During the Bloomberg
Wealth interview Griffin acknowledged that he was wrong to have been in
the "naysayer camp" with regard to digital assets. “Crypto has been one
of the great stories in finance over the course of the last 15 years,”
he stated before adding:

“And I’ll be clear, I’ve been in
the naysayer camp over that period of time. But the crypto market today
has a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers,
which tells you that I haven’t been right on this call.”

He said that he was still skeptical but “there are hundreds and millions of people in this world today who disagree with that.”

“To
the extent that we’re trying to help institutions and investors solve
their portfolio allocation problems, we have to give serious
consideration to being a market maker in crypto.”

Citadel
analyzes global markets employing a range of strategies to deliver
market-leading investment returns to its capital partners. Griffin wants
the firm to encompass crypto assets into these strategies over the
coming months.

In January, Citadel Securities announced its first
outside investment worth $1.15 billion from two prominent crypto venture
capital firms Sequoia Capital and Paradigm. Citadel, which currently
has around $38 billion in assets under management, was valued at $22
billion following the investments.

Related: Citadel Securities takes in $1.15B investment from Sequoia and Paradigm

As
recent as November, Griffin remained highly skeptical about
cryptocurrencies stating at the time that people are focused on new
ideas and that he worried “that some of this passion is misplaced when
it comes to cryptocurrencies.”

The billionaire investor did go on to tout the properties of Ethereum, however, opining that assets based on Ethereum will eventually replace Bitcoin which has a greater environmental impact.