Industrialist Charlie Munger, also a partner and aide of Warren Buffett, stated that he has always steered clear of Cryptocurrencies and mentions tokens like Bitcoin as nothing less than "rat poison."
During the annual general meeting of Daily Journal Corporation, a news publishing and technology provider company owned by Charlie Munger, Vice-President of Berkshire Hathaway, he said that he wished cryptocurrencies had never been invented. He also said in the said meeting that “I certainly didn’t invest in crypto. I’m proud of the fact I’ve avoided it. It’s like a venereal disease or something. I just regard it as beneath contempt.”
In the past, too, he was seen praising the Chinese government for their decision to ban cryptocurrencies and their related activities fully earlier in 2021. He also called out to the US government to similarly ban cryptocurrencies too. He was quoted as saying in the annual general meeting, which was broadcasted by Yahoo Finance, “Certainly the great short squeeze in GameStop was wretched excess, certainly the Bitcoin thing is wretched excess.”
He had previously said in a report by Australian Financial Review that “Believe me, the people who are getting into cryptocurrencies are not thinking about the customer, they’re thinking about themselves. I want to make my money by selling people things that are good for them, not things that are bad for them.”
Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, previously had called Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies “rat poison” and also said that they have no value at all. He said that he believes in investing in those companies and assets that he understands and has a viable future. So he does not understand Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies hence he refrained from investing in them, he said in a CNBC interview a few years back.
But despite Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s Mutual hatred towards cryptocurrencies, their company Berkshire Hathaway invested $500 million in Brazilian neo bank ‘Nu Bank’ in 2021. Now this year, they have doubled their stake by investing $1 billion in Nu Bank and at the same time sold part of their stake worth $3 billion in Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc, reported fortune.com. Nu Bank is a neo bank that offers savings and investment products to its customers. But they also offer their customers access to bitcoin ETF investments via their subsidiary NuInvest, something which both Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger oppose, yet they invested such sums of money in this Brazilian bank.