Well, you can add Warren Buffett to the (increasingly long) list of people who want nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.
“We don’t own any, we’re not short any, we’ll never have a position in them,” Buffett told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday.
He also noted that if he could, he’d gladly make a billion (or five or six) on the demise of a bubble that recently garnered the rather dubious title of “most egregious speculative mania in the history of the world”:
“If I could buy a five-year put on every one of the cryptocurrencies, I’d be glad to do it,” he said, adding that cryptocurrencies “will almost certainly have a bad ending.”
With most cryptocurrencies,"I can say with almost certainty that it will come to a bad ending." – Buffett, saying he'd put a 5-year put on every one.@CNBC pic.twitter.com/a6n0deXegi
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) January 10, 2018
We imagine readers will be a bit more cautious about maligning “The Oracle” than they’ve been about castigating the likes of Jack Bogle and Jeremy Grantham for their skepticism with regard to the crypto mania.
Or maybe not. Because God knows a favorite meme among Bitcoin disciples revolves around the notion that old fogies like Buffett are hopelessly behind the times in their penchant for preferring actual real money and assets to make-believe “coins” that aren’t backed by anything other than FOMO and have exactly zero salvage value if (or, perhaps more appropriately “when”) they invariably collapse under their own weight.
So you know, draw your own conclusions. Maybe Buffett is just salty after his close encounter of the Chris Larsen-kind on the Forbes list earlier this month…
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He should put his money where his mouth is
I’m relatively certain the point here is that the market for long-dated puts is, essentially, non-existent in crypto-currencies. And even if there were a counter-party willing to provide a bespoke put-option for Buffett, the counter-party risk, or the risk that said individual/institution won’t be around long enough to service the bet, is enormous. In other words, he really can’t put his money where his mouth is due to the fact that the crypto markets aren’t sufficiently evolved and liquid to provide for bets such as what he articulated.
no bank would take the other side of a Warren Buffett short bet on cryptocurrencies. that would be suicidal.
If Buffet really had that much confidence in it’s demise he would be a fool not to be shorting. Sounds like this area is just well outside his understanding.
See above counter-party risk
Maybe he meant, I’ll bet against it with my mouth and buy with both hands. He he
GBTC has gone from $3523 since mid Dec. down to 1961 – almost half its value and stayed there,, and as well
NYSE Bitcoin Index has fallen from $18,723.82 to 13,743 today. It’s all a moot point now. And while there are surely BitCoin millionaires out there, more recently – and unfortunately for them – there are probably more people who bought BitCoins at more than $18723 depending on the premiums they paid then. I doubt that Buffet has sleep because of any BitCoin FOMO. Some of us made money and we were simply lucky.
God, that video is difficult to watch. This is a man who was the best in his time. Now he’s willing to say “I don’t know anything about cryptocurrency” and “I’m certain they are nearly all going to zero” within a minute of each other. Even these TV people were too kind to point out the glaring contradiction.
there’s nothing to know. which is why he doesn’t feel like he needs to learn about it. it’s fake. as in: made up.
did it occur to you that maybe he hasn’t learned about it because it’s glaringly obvious that it isn’t real?
I wouldn’t be griping if he said “I understand what it is, and it’s going to zero.”