'Robinhood is not a place to trust holding your money': Strategist

Bitcoin jumped to a six-week high. Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management CEO Ross Gerber joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss.

Video transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: It's not only all of that going on. We also have a red-hot start to the week for crypto as Bitcoin rockets higher, moving more than 12% to the upside. Well, now just a little bit below that but still closing in on the $40,000 level as a London business paper "City AM" reports that Amazon is gearing up to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is later this year. We already knew that the company had opened and posted a position to head its digital currency strategy, and that had really already sparked some rumors around what Amazon had planned. But it's obviously giving a big boost here to the whole crypto space.

And for more on what that move could trigger when it looks-- when it comes to where Bitcoin prices could move in the back half of the year, happy to bring on our first guest today, the one and only Ross Gerber. Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management CEO joins us once again. Ross, I know you're a Bitcoin guy. I know you got the partnership with the Winklevoss's Gemini exchange. But in your mind, I mean, $40,000 seems like a pretty key level. Is this the beginning of a more stronger move towards that $100,000 price target?

ROSS GERBER: Yeah, you know, I'm super bullish on Bitcoin long term, and you're seeing these moves. You know, Shopify is already enabled to actually accept Bitcoin, even though they're not yet. And Amazon's starting to feel the pressure from Square, which has enormous payment system. And clearly, from the-- I think, really, the rally was sparked last week because of Jack Dorsey and Elon discussing this integration of Bitcoin into our lives and into the future currency system as a global currency system. I think it really got investors enthusiastic again.

But behind the scenes, like what my firm's doing and now what many other firms are trying to figure out how to do is to offer Bitcoin to clients. And we've seen no, you know, change in demand for crypto assets from clients. We're seeing heavy demand for crypto assets and for a very good reason, and we're very bullish on the long term. So any weakness in Bitcoin is a buying opportunity.

KRISTIN MYERS: So then, Ross, I do want to ask you, just because we do have this Robinhood IPO coming this week, and they talked about in their roadshow essentially offering up a wallet. And I think for most really young investors, Robinhood is a way that folks can jump into the cryptocurrency space, purchasing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some of the others. Do you think, especially considering how bullish you are on Bitcoin and some of the moves that we have been seeing this week, that it could help boost Robinhood not just this week with their IPO, but even out ahead?

ROSS GERBER: Yes and no. You know, Robinhood is not a place to trust holding your money. They're very, very poor stewards of people's money, and they survive on transaction fees, which could be severely cut. So it puts at risk your crypto assets trusting them with creating your wallet.

When you have firms like Gemini or Coinbase, which are excellent, well-run firms with long histories in crypto but also with the kind of financial base that give you a lot more confidence than I think Robinhood has, as they're now going around begging their customers for money. So you know, I would be concerned. Although I'm very positive about so many different firms offering crypto, the last thing we need is one of these firms blowing up and causing a lot of doubt in the system, too.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, we heard that on the roadshow, some of the questions around when those wallets would be available so they can have full custody of their crypto assets. But Ross--

ROSS GERBER: Right.

ZACK GUZMAN: Let's focus in on another one of those companies that you've long championed. That would be Tesla, earnings on deck after the bell.

ROSS GERBER: Yeah.

ZACK GUZMAN: What are you going be looking for? What's the key thing here? Because I mean, a lot of people are excited to potentially see a return to operating profit and a potential record there, as we saw in the last third quarter we got from them. So what are you going to be digging into after the bell?

ROSS GERBER: You know, honestly, I really have come to not care much about these quarterly reports from the sense of within the quarter. What I really care about is what's happening in Austin and the speed of their ability to get production going for the semi truck and the Cybertruck. What I really care about is full self-driving, where we're actually at to a more wider release. That's really, really important, I think, for Tesla's long term.

We know sales are good. We know demand's off the charts. And we want to get some more clarity on what's happening with the Model S production lines, which seem to be starting and re-stopping and starting again, which I'm not sure what's going on. I have the Plaid. It's the best car ever created. So you know, I highly recommend Tesla is a long-term investment, but you know, they're in a very important growth stage right now. So what really matters is how that's going, more than what the numbers are this quarter.

KRISTIN MYERS: When do you think we might see Tesla starting to accept Bitcoin again? I know Musk has had a lot of comments and statements on that lately. But I'm just going to ask, let's combine Tesla and Bitcoin right now.

ROSS GERBER: Right.

KRISTIN MYERS: When do you think they're going to start accepting that as a payment?

ROSS GERBER: I think pretty soon, actually. You know, I'm in Laguna Beach right now, and I was just told the two last home purchases in this neighborhood I'm renting in were bought with Bitcoin. So when you start thinking about this as an ecosystem for commerce, you don't really want to be sitting on the sidelines, and Tesla's been an innovator there. And I assume that we're going to see this among pretty much all companies over the next 12 months start accepting Bitcoin.

And it's really easy to do. There's no reason why we can't accept cryptocurrencies in the current financial system we have. And this is the beginning to the end of traditional banking. So I'm super bullish on Tesla and Bitcoin, and them together is ideal. And of course, you can get exposure to both of those in my fund, GK, which we just launched last-- this month.

So I-- you know, I think they're going to do it. I think he challenged Square to take Bitcoin as payment or Twitter to take Bitcoin as payments for ads. So I think Jack Dorsey, he was kind of like, why don't you step up, too? And I think we're going to see a lot of companies step up.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, we'll leave that there. Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, thanks so much for joining us today.