Despite many people heeding his lessons on investing, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) CEO Warren Buffett has long been criticized by the cryptocurrency community over his stance on digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC), which he has slammed as lacking intrinsic value and ‘rat poison.’
His right-hand man Charlie Munger is not far from Buffett on the matter, stating that investors should “never touch” crypto but instead look beyond the inflation spike, as well as support both fossil fuels and renewable energy because, in his view, “crypto is an investment in nothing,” and a “bad combination” of “partly fraud and partly delusion.”
However, their predictions of a crypto downfall have so far failed to materialize, as the majority of the largest cryptocurrencies feature proven use cases, cryptos are being traded daily on crypto exchanges, while the industry’s market capitalization currently stands at over $1 trillion, as per the CoinMarketCap data retrieved on March 27.
Crypto’s success
On top of that, the unfolding banking crisis has driven Bitcoin’s market cap to surpass that of traditional finance behemoths, including the payments platform Visa (NYSE: V) and banking giant JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). At the same time, Bitcoin has outperformed 97% of all S&P 500 publicly traded companies this year.
Furthermore, it should be noted that Bitcoin has recorded better results than commodities in 2023, particularly gold, which is considered “the top-performing old-guard commodity,” by almost 10 times, which is possibly indicative of a super cycle, according to Bloomberg’s commodity expert Mike McGlone.
Meanwhile, the crypto community has not stayed silent to Buffett’s hostile remarks. After he stated he would never buy Bitcoin, even if its entire supply were offered to him for $25, as it “isn’t going to do anything,” several experts shared their opinions.
Specifically, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted in May that Bitcoin and Buffett “don’t need each other. Warren has enough paper money and is happy. Bitcoin has enough supporters and growing.” As he explained in another tweet:
“No need to sell/promote Bitcoin to people who have already made up their mind that they don’t want it. We don’t need 100% adoption. Currently, adoption is probably less than 5%. Teach it to the others who may need it.”
Not only that, but Linda P. Jones, author of the crypto book 3 Steps to Quantum Wealth, drew attention to Buffett’s investments in companies that have exposure to cryptos, including investing $500 million in a Brazilian crypto-friendly financial institution Nubank, which reached 1 million crypto users in less than a month in July.
Pratik Gauri, the founder and CEO of 5ire, a blockchain company promising to offer sustainability, technology, and innovation to usher in the fifth industrial revolution, chastised Buffett, asking him and his right-hand man Charlie Munger if they had solved a single one of the top 17 sustainable development goals from the global agenda.
“The old guard at the helm of the industry that created the current sustainability crisis are venting their frustrations at something they neither understand nor can control. (…) Most of the rapid innovation occurring is happening in the crypto space,” he said.
Finally, in April 2022, Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner at investment firm SkyBridge Capital and former advisor to Donald Trump, criticized Buffett and several other anti-crypto billionaires, questioning the quality of their research (or lack thereof) on crypto, suggesting they did not “do the homework),” as Finbold reported.
