Warren Buffett won't buy all the Bitcoin in the world for $25

It isn't a productive asset.
Ameya Paleja
Warren Buffett at a White House function in 2010White House USA/ Wikimedia Commons

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathway and one of the top 10 billionaires in the world, hasn't warmed up to cryptocurrencies yet and does look like he will anytime soon. At his company's recently held annual shareholders meeting, Buffett said he wouldn't pay even $25 for all the Bitcoin in the world, CNBC reported

Unlike the richest person on the planet, Elon Musk, who not only accepts Bitcoin for the cars his company makes and has also been pushing retail outlets like McDonald's to accept cryptocurrencies, Buffett has been against the crypto coins for quite some time. 

Buffett isn't alone. American financier and Wall Street's most successful investor, Carl Icahn, has called cryptocurrencies ridiculous, while real estate magnate, Sam Zell, has been "skeptical of Bitcoin," Business Insider has previously reported. On the tech side, the Winklevoss twins have made and lost fortunes in cryptocurrencies and still stand by them. At the same time, Bill Gates, while in favor of a digital economy, is not impressed by the anonymity of blockchain technology. 

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, had once called Bitcoin a fraud but has since changed his mind and allowed the bank to deal in crypto-based assets. 91-year-old Buffett, though, has not been easy to convert. 

Why is Warren Buffett against Bitcoin? 

Reiterating his stand against the cryptocurrency, Buffett said that he would happily pay $25 billion for a one-percent stake in a hypothetical consortium that owned all the farmlands and apartments in the U.S. However, he wouldn't even pay $25 for all the Bitcoin in the world. 

Explaining his hard stance, Buffett said that while farmlands produced food and apartments would yield rents, Bitcoin wasn't a productive asset, and he couldn't do anything with it except sell it back to another person, one way or another. 

Buffett admitted that Bitcoin allured a lot of people because it had a type of "magic" to draw investors. He did not know whether Bitcoin would go up or down in the future but was sure that it wouldn't multiply; it wouldn't produce anything. 

Buffett has previously warned that cryptocurrencies "will come to a bad ending," but his company will never have a position on them. 

Cryptocurrencies have always been volatile throughout their short history. Last year, their total market cap had crossed $2 trillion but has since shrunken to $700-billion, CNBC reported.  

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