87 years old Warren Buffett is known as one of the most successful investors in the world. He was raised in Omaha, Nebraska, where he still works and lives today. “The Oracle of Omaha”, as he is sometimes called, owns 32.4 percent of Berkshire Hathaway, an investment company that he successfully managed since the mid-1960s.
Because of his successes, many in the finance industry listen to what Warren Buffett has to say. Therefore, there are also many who have reacted on his negative view on cryptocurrencies. Last Saturday he participated in Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. There he once again stated that “cryptocurrencies will come to bad endings”, CCN reports.
According to CNBC reporter Becky Quick, who attended the annual meeting, the investment guru talked about bitcoin and said that “it’s rat poison squared”.
Now some are speculating that Buffett’s critical attitude toward cryptocurrencies may have underlying business reasons. Berkshire Hathaway’s biggest investments are in traditional companies that can potentially lose a lot if the crypto world continues to grow. A recently published post on Reddit states that the investment company’s twelve largest holdings consist mostly of banks, which according to many people, view cryptocurrencies as a competition.
The importance of being updated
Listening to investment advice from Warren Buffet may be wise. But at the same time, he has said that cryptocurrencies are something that he has not yet fully grasped, which may be the reason for his underlying skepticism.
Berkshire Hathaway’s investment philosophy is to avoid technology companies, a view that also Warren Buffett himself shares. However, he acknowledged that he was wrong with Amazon and Google and that it was a mistake not to invest in these major internet companies when they were in their start-up period.
“It would have been far better obviously if I had some insights into certain businesses”, Warren Buffett says according to Fortune.
Younger billionaires are more positive
While Warren Buffett is more conservative and advises people not to invest in cryptocurrencies, his younger business colleagues do not agree with him. For example, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey and co-founder of Paypal Peter Thiel has talked about the fact that cryptocurrencies will replace today’s “regular” currencies in the future.
Tim Draper, an early investor in Skype, Hotmail, and Tesla, believes that bitcoin will grow bigger than these three companies together. He believes that the crypto phenomenon is a bigger revolution than the internet, CNN reports.
