Billionaire private equity titan David Rubenstein believes Bitcoin (BTC) is here to stay thanks to growing institutional interest as evidenced by BlackRock’s application for a spot bitcoin ETF, as well as general global demand for a form of money that can’t be controlled by governments.

“A lot of people around the world want to be able to trade in a currency that their government can’t know what they have and they want to be able to move it around rightly or wrongly and so I don’t think bitcoin is going away,” he said during an appearance on Bloomberg TV Tuesday.

The co-founder and co-chairman of private equity giant Carlyle Group, Rubenstein admitted his regrets for not having bought bitcoin when it was at $100. He said that people who once mocked the crypto and the sector in general might be forced to take another look given recent interest from traditional finance giants like BlackRock.

“What’s happened is people made fun of bitcoin and other crypto currencies but now the establishment, Larry Fink at BlackRock, is now saying they’re going to have an ETF if approved by the government in bitcoin so you’re saying wait a second, the mighty BlackRock is willing to have an ETF in bitcoin, maybe bitcoin is going to be around for a while,” he said.

Rubenstein has previously disclosed that he is personally invested in companies that facilitate crypto trading, although not owning any cryptocurrencies directly.

Speaking about recent enforcement actions from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by Chair Gary Gensler, Rubenstein said that Ripple’s win in a recent case proves that the agency has not yet convinced the courts that cryptocurrencies are “bad.”