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Warren Buffets opinion is about 100x more valid than anyone else. He doesn't need to understand the specific technology - he understands markets, investing pat

Warren Buffets opinion is about 100x more valid than anyone else. He doesn't need to understand the specific technology - he understands markets, investing patterns and most importantly, risk. For the richest person in the world to not even want to buy in a little bit actually says a lot (he said he'd never invest in them). If there are opportunities to definitely make money then he has the resources to analyze, be vigilant and make it work for him... he also has plenty of money that he'd be free to lose cause yeah, 20 years to live. Everything you've said about bitcoin could have easily been said about CDOs in 2005-06 when there was "plenty of opportunity" and yet Warren Buffett avoided losing his shirt, unlike plenty of other people who thought they understood the derivatives market. And that was back when those other people were actually trained investors who had to pass Series 7 to even touch the stuff.

mankash666 9y ago
Data already proves him wrong - if he'd placed a 5 year bet in 2009 on BTC, he'd already have received a 100x return. An 8 year bet? 1000X returns. Why pick 5 years? Many of Buffet's investments have that kind of windows. Never say never.
- gooseus 9y ago
  If he invested using this logic he wouldn't be the richest person in the world. This is one of the gambling fallacies of "Oh man, if I hadn't folded I'd have won it on the river! I should remember that next time I get dealt 6,9 off-suit". And yes, it's gambling because there isn't any metric to assess the value of the asset beyond some arbitrary price. Investments in other instruments can be measured by looking at balance sheets and cash-flow and other performance metrics of the entities that are receiving the investment (how is my investment being used to produce ROI?). Not so with crypto, all the data is basically about a computer network and it doesn't produce an actual product in the real world... because it's not a real currency and it's not a real investment vehicle. They're just casino chips that play one game - buy low, sell high. The big mistake people are making here is thinking that Buffett/Munger and real financial investors are gamblers like everyone else and they're not, they are old-school and who invest in actual real world products that serve a real-world purpose that they believe will produce a measurable return with a measurable risk. In 2009 all the talk was about changing the world and making transactions seamless and the world was going to be buying coffees with crypto and houses/cars with crypto and we'd start the digital utopia. Based on that investor deck, they passed, and they were absolutely right looking at how it has turned out. Just because this startup pivoted into a global slot machine with an energy cost the size of Ecuador and lots of people have hit it big doesn't mean it's a real world product, serving a real world purpose. When the bubble bursts and lots of everyday people lose their shirts, the backlash is going to set back any actual plans of a crypto-topia decades if not more and probably send a shock-wave through the venture capital market (and beyond) putting many in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) out of job (with many into bankruptcy). They are predicting that too since this same article mentions that they believe venture capital is a bubble as well. If I were heavily invested in crypto I would take this news as a (yet another) sign and would move out of crypto and into whatever safe vehicles will be robust to a venture capital / crypto collapse. And if I were a Silicon Valley employee anywhere near blockchain, I would be diversifying my skill-set and updating my resume.

mankash666 9y ago

Data already proves him wrong - if he'd placed a 5 year bet in 2009 on BTC, he'd already have received a 100x return. An 8 year bet? 1000X returns. Why pick 5 years? Many of Buffet's investments have that kind of windows. Never say never.

gooseus 9y ago
If he invested using this logic he wouldn't be the richest person in the world. This is one of the gambling fallacies of "Oh man, if I hadn't folded I'd have won it on the river! I should remember that next time I get dealt 6,9 off-suit". And yes, it's gambling because there isn't any metric to assess the value of the asset beyond some arbitrary price. Investments in other instruments can be measured by looking at balance sheets and cash-flow and other performance metrics of the entities that are receiving the investment (how is my investment being used to produce ROI?). Not so with crypto, all the data is basically about a computer network and it doesn't produce an actual product in the real world... because it's not a real currency and it's not a real investment vehicle. They're just casino chips that play one game - buy low, sell high. The big mistake people are making here is thinking that Buffett/Munger and real financial investors are gamblers like everyone else and they're not, they are old-school and who invest in actual real world products that serve a real-world purpose that they believe will produce a measurable return with a measurable risk. In 2009 all the talk was about changing the world and making transactions seamless and the world was going to be buying coffees with crypto and houses/cars with crypto and we'd start the digital utopia. Based on that investor deck, they passed, and they were absolutely right looking at how it has turned out. Just because this startup pivoted into a global slot machine with an energy cost the size of Ecuador and lots of people have hit it big doesn't mean it's a real world product, serving a real world purpose. When the bubble bursts and lots of everyday people lose their shirts, the backlash is going to set back any actual plans of a crypto-topia decades if not more and probably send a shock-wave through the venture capital market (and beyond) putting many in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) out of job (with many into bankruptcy). They are predicting that too since this same article mentions that they believe venture capital is a bubble as well. If I were heavily invested in crypto I would take this news as a (yet another) sign and would move out of crypto and into whatever safe vehicles will be robust to a venture capital / crypto collapse. And if I were a Silicon Valley employee anywhere near blockchain, I would be diversifying my skill-set and updating my resume.