“Of course I hate the bitcoin success,” Munger said. “And I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth. Nor do I like shuffling out a few extra billions and billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air.”
“I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization,” he continued.
That success to which Munger was referring is bitcoin’s better-than-90% price increase year to date. While Berkshire shares have handily beaten the performance of the S&P 500 for far this year, up 18.6% against the S&P 500’s 11.3%, they beside pale the leading cryptocurrency.
Looking back over the past 52 weeks, the reason for Munger’s anger becomes even more apparent with Berkshire having risen 50.5% against bitcoin more than 500% gain.
Given Munger’s apparent loathing for the leading cryptocurrency, which is rapidly gaining acceptance on Wall Street and beyond as a respectable and investable asset, it was probably a good thing for the 97-year-old’s health that no one brought up dogecoin. That meme-based cryptocurrency that was started as a joke in 2013 is up more than 7,900% year to date.
Meanwhile, Munger’s boss, Berkshire’s Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, took a hard pass on commenting on bitcoin.
“We’ve probably got hundreds of thousands of people watching this [meeting remotely] that own bitcoin, and we’ve probably got two people who are short,” the legendary investor said.
“So we have a choice of making 400,000 people mad at us and unhappy, or making two people happy, and that’s just a dumb equation.”
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