On Wednesday (Jan. 10), Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, said he believes the bitcoin craze will come to an ending that won’t be good news for investors.
In an interview with CNBC, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway argued that cryptocurrencies “will come to a bad ending,” although he couldn’t say when that will happen.
“If I could buy a five-year put on every one of the cryptocurrencies, I’d be glad to do it, but I would never short a dime’s worth,” he said. “We don’t own any, we’re not short any, we’ll never have a position in them,” he said.“I get into enough trouble with things I think I know something about. Why in the world should I take a long or short position in something I don’t know anything about?”
The comments on the part of Buffett come just one day after Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive officer, admitted he regrets calling bitcoin a “fraud”: “I regret making [those comments],” Dimon said. “The blockchain is real. You can have crypto yen and dollars and stuff like that.”
In September, when the price of bitcoin was surging, Dimon famously called the cryptocurrency a fraud and warned that he would fire any trader who bought and sold it. He reiterated his lack of interest in the digital currency, saying in an interview that the government will likely intervene and hurt bitcoin’s growth and acceptance around the globe.
“The bitcoin [issue], to me, was always what the governments are going to feel about bitcoin as it gets really big,” he said at the time. “I just have a different opinion than other people. I’m not interested that much in the subject at all.”
Dimon does support blockchain technologies, however, and feels initial coin offerings (ICOs) must be examined on an individual basis.
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