By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Buffett has slammed Bitcoin yet again as he doubled down on his skepticism of the digital currency.
Warren Buffett, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.A), notably dedicated a considerable amount of time to talking about the premier digital currency as he compared it to varying investment options with inherent values at the Annual Shareholders Meeting of the company
Buffett noted that despite the broad acknowledgment around the investing world as to the growing popularity of Bitcoin (BTC), he still wouldn’t commit his funds to purchase the cryptocurrency.
“Whether it goes up or down in the next year, or five or 10 years, I don’t know. But the one thing I’m pretty sure of is that it doesn’t produce anything,” Buffett said. “It’s got a magic to it and people have attached magics to lots of things.”
That the digital currency is now very popular does not necessarily mean it is a healthy asset class as Buffett noted that there is “nobody” short on BTC and that everyone who owns a stake in the asset is in for a long time. While Buffett has chosen to be unrelenting in his doubts, the broader crypto community has highlighted on more occasions than one how much of a utility the digital currency has.
While Buffett said he could pay $25 billion for 1% of farmlands in the United States and another $25 billion to own 1% of apartment houses in the country because he believes both investments can yield good returns per the value they both offer. Drawing on this, He said he could not pay $25 for all of the Bitcoin in the world.
“Now if you told me you own all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25 I wouldn’t take it because what would I do with it? I’d have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything. The apartments are going to produce rent and the farms are going to produce food,” he said.
Crypto Community Mocks Warren Buffett’s Bitcoin Speech
While Warren Buffett’s speech was based on his convictions, he has inevitably come under fire from the crypto community, especially the Bitcoin maximalists. According to Scott Lewis, the co-founder of DeFiPulse, crypto is worth much more than Buffett imagined.
“Warren Buffett thinking crypto is worth zero is funny bc he has literally no idea that Ethereum just had a customer pay $150M to use the software for 2 hours,” he said in a tweet.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and the new owner of Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) also mocked Buffett’s speech, sharing his comment in response to a tweet from Marc Andreessen, the Co-founder of top crypto venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) who said: “It’s so wild he says this stuff while nakedly shilling diabetes.” Musk said the Sage of Omaha, as Buffett is popularly called, talked about Bitcoin many times, an insinuation that he invariably shilled Bitcoin.
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1520655019866959873