Billionaire banker Ken Moelis says the bitcoin craze is like the gold rush of 1848 – and the meme stock frenzy is down to its entertainment value

Billionaire banker Ken Moelis says the bitcoin craze is like the gold rush of 1848 – and the meme stock frenzy is down to its entertainment value

Investment banker Ken Moelis likened the craze to the at a this week, and said he's eyeing the cryptocurrency space for business opportunities, just as Levi Strauss did for miners in 1848. Moelis, who founded the boutique investment bank Moelis & Co, said he was personally open to investing in crypto, but his firm is more focused on having expertise before diving into it. "It's a big market, there's a lot of capital in there, there's a lot of projects," he said, adding that he remains cautious of taking his firm into the space. More-traditional banks have until recently taken a watchful stance toward bitcoin and other mainstream cryptocurrencies. But an explosion of adoption by and of new deals in the area has solidified the establishment of a whole new asset class in the financial world. "It's like the gold rush of 1848. A lot of people didn't know if there was gold in the ground, but Levi's made a business selling jeans and Wells Fargo made a banking business," Moelis said at the summit. "I believe our business is selling the picks and the shovels, so we have to know what people want - what picks and what shovels