Billionaire investor Marc Lasry: I should have bought bitcoin when it was at $300
- Lasry says he took another look around the $9,000-$10,000 level just a few weeks ago.
- "I should have bought that thing," he said. "It seems like a new currency is being created."
Billionaire investor Marc Lasry told CNBC on Thursday that he should've bought bitcoin when it was at $300 just a couple years ago.
The cryptocurrency, which began 2017 below $1,000 per unit, blasted through $19,000 on Thursday, in a two-day wild ride, on Coinbase, a main trading platform.
But Lasry said on "Squawk on the Street" that he took another look around the $9,000-$10,000 level just a few weeks ago.
"I wanted to start buying it personally," said Lasry. "Then I was like ... 'I'll just wait for it to take a little dip.' And it hasn't taken a dip. ... I should have bought that thing."
The overall pace of bitcoin gains has accelerated in recent weeks ahead of the launch of bitcoin futures on the CME and Cboe.
The rapid advances have prompted some market participants to warn of a bubble.
Lasry said he does not think the digital currency is a "fraud," as JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon has claimed. "I think it's real," Lasry told CNBC on Thursday.
"Look, I don't understand it," Lasry admitted. "I just sort of looked at it and said it seems like a new currency is being created."
"The reason you're seeing this huge run-up over the course of the last couple of weeks is ... it's coming into the mainstream," he added.
Lasry's day job is running the distressed debt investment firm that he helped start, Avenue Capital Group, which has about $9.8 billion in assets under management.
He also owns a stake in the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks.