By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Justin Sun bids over $4.5 million to have a power dinner with the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, in an auction aimed to raise money to help the needy and drug addicts in San Francisco.
The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, can afford to become a connoisseur of fine food. Although the Berkshire Hathaway founder ranks among the wealthiest people worldwide, he never eats or lives like a king. He is famous to reach the age of 88 on a diet of Coca Cola and Utz potato sticks for breakfast. Buffet also enjoys Dairy Queen Sundaes and fast food from McDonald’s.
What would Buffet think of someone on May 31 bidding to pay more than $4.5 million to have lunch with him? On a normal day, he would term it as a total waste of money. However, this time he will approve it since the money is going to charity. It is the 20th year that Buffet has auctioned a ‘power lunch’ and the winner this time is Tron’s CEO Justin Sun.
He revealed through a tweet that he placed a bid of $4.57 million to lunch with crypto-basher Warren Buffett. This meal is a part of the ‘Oracle of Omaha’s’ yearly charity auction for the Glide Foundation.
Sun meets Buffet at Smith & Wollensky’s in Manhattan and announced that he would invite seven crypto-industry leaders to join them. The Tron founder wrote in a Medium post:
“I’m a long-term believer (and certainly a big fan) of Buffett and his long-term value investing strategy.”
The Meal
Sun said that he expects to teach the Wall Street guru about blockchain and cryptocurrency during the lunch. He further added that investors regularly change their opinions saying:
“Investment opportunities are best when lots of people are underestimating the technology.”
Over the years, Buffet has been vocal on his negative opinions toward crypto assets and Bitcoin. He even went ahead to describe Bitcoin as “rat poison squared”. The Bloomberg article on Sun’s win quoted the Tron CEO saying that:
“Even one of the most successful investors of all times can sometimes miss a coming wave. Buffett has admitted he overpaid for big investment food giant Kraft Heinz Co., while failing to realize the potential of the likes of Amazon.com Inc.; Alphabet, the parent of Google; and even Apple.”
Sun’s $4,567,888 bid was part of a Glide charity organization auction that helps the homeless. The money raised also serves to help those battling drug addictions in San Francisco. According to the list of previous winning bids, Sun’s bid ranks as the highest.
The Crypto Community Responds
Various comments on Sun’s Twitter announcement post were positive talking of the money going to charity. Nonetheless, the post also saw negative comments. Some talks came up about charity usage to promote Tron. There was also the sentiment that the news was anticlimactic and several users indulged in the mentioning of falling asset prices.
BitTorrent (BTT) lost over 5% while Tron was relatively unmoved according to CoinMarketCap. Nonetheless, these numbers could be associated with many other market variables.