scorecardresearchWarren Buffett says he wouldn’t buy all the bitcoins in the world for $25

Warren Buffett says he wouldn’t buy all the bitcoins in the world for $25

Updated: 04 May 2022, 01:26 PM IST
TL;DR.

The ace investor said the bitcoin doesn’t produce anything unlike farmland or apartment

Warren Buffett described his views on farmland and rental properties versus bitcoin as the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy

Warren Buffett described his views on farmland and rental properties versus bitcoin as the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy

There is no remote possibility of legendary investor Warren Buffett adding bitcoins to his portfolio any time soon. At the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting he was asked if he had changed his views on cryptocurrency, the 91-year-old investor didn’t mince his words, wrote CNBC.

Buffett began his answer by saying that if all the attendees in the room owned “all the farmland in the United States” or “all the apartments in the country” and they offered him a 1% stake for $25 billion, he would write them a check on the spot. But he wouldn’t do the same for bitcoin and its over-$700 billion market cap.

“If you ... owned all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it,” Buffett said. “Because what would I do with it? I’ll have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.”

He described his views on farmland and rental properties versus bitcoin as “the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy got.”

“The apartments are going to produce rent and the farms are going to produce food,” he said. “If I’ve got all the bitcoin, I’m back wherever [anonymous bitcoin founder Satoshi] was.”

He attributed the allure of bitcoin to a type of “magic” that draws investors.

“Whether it goes up or down in the next year or five years or 10 years, I don’t know. But one thing I’m sure of is that it doesn’t multiply, it doesn’t produce anything,” he said. “It’s got a magic to it, and people have attached magic to lots of things.”

Buffett has long been against cryptocurrencies. In 2018, he said “they will come to a bad ending” and said that Berkshire Hathaway will “never have a position in them.”

“I get into enough trouble with the things I think I know something about,” he said at the time. “Why in the world should I take a long or short position in something I don’t know about?”

First Published: 04 May 2022, 01:26 PM IST