âOracle of Omahaâ Warren Buffett, whose aphorisms and advice many investors take as gospel, has laid into bitcoin, saying itâs a gamble, not an investment.
The Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO â and the worldâs third-wealthiest person, according to Forbes â has long been skeptical of bitcoin. In his latest comments on the subject, he told Yahoo Finance on Saturday, âIf you buy something like bitcoin or some cryptocurrency, you donât really have anything that has produced anything. Youâre just hoping the next guy pays more.â
He continued:
âThereâs nothing wrong with it. If you wanna gamble somebody else will come along and pay more money tomorrow, thatâs one kind of game. That is not investing.â
Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile mill, in the early 1960s and turned it into one of the worldâs most successful investment vehicles. According to his most recent letter to shareholders, the firmâs share price has increased by 2.4 million percent since the takeover, compared to 15,500 percent for the broad stock market.
That success has been attributed to a strategy of buying strong firms with business models that are simple to understand and difficult to disrupt. That philosophy has led Buffet to be skeptical of the technology sector and of bitcoin in particular, which he called a âmirageâ in March 2014.
Bitcoin was trading at around $600 when Buffett made that comment. In January, when the price was around $14,000, Buffett doubled down, saying cryptocurrencies âwill come to a bad ending.â The cryptocurrencyâs price is close to $9,300 at the time of writing.
One of Buffettâs most famous quotes is âour ideal holding period is forever.â In Saturdayâs comments, he further criticized bitcoin, arguing its value is too dependent on trading.
âNow if you ban trading in farms, you can still buy farms and have a perfectly decent investment,â he said, but if trading in bitcoin was banned, people would have no reason to invest.
He did not address the bitcoin âhodlerâ movement, whose advocates urge investors never to sell.
Warren Buffett image via Shutterstock.