Buffett secretly added "rat poison" to friendly banks. Has the stock god changed his mind about Bitcoin?

Not long ago, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold some of its Visa and Mastercard holdings and increased its investment exposure in Nubank, Brazil's largest fintech bank .

According to public filings, Berkshire Hathaway purchased $1 billion worth of Nubank Class A shares in the fourth quarter of 2021, while selling $1.8 billion and $1.3 billion worth of Visa and Mastercard shares, respectively.

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From "rat poison" to "rat poison squared"

Nubank's trading platform Easynvest has been actively offering Bitcoin ETFs since June 2021. It has now become a crypto-friendly investment channel that provides customers with Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) . It has more than 40 million customers in Latin America. With this full of "Bitcoin" elements, Nubank can be said to be a true "crypto asset company."

But before that, Buffett was an almost well-known cryptocurrency skeptic and Bitcoin opponent . What the market knows best is undoubtedly that when the price of Bitcoin was just over $100, Buffett likened Bitcoin to "rat poison."

After Bitcoin rose from more than 100 US dollars to more than 9,000 US dollars, the reporter again asked Buffett for his opinion, and Buffett replied, " It might be the square of rat poison ."

In fact, Buffett at that time agreed that Bitcoin was a very effective way to transfer funds, knowing that users could transfer funds completely anonymously . However, he believed that checks were also a way to transfer funds. But would checks be worth a lot of money simply because of their ability to transfer funds?

In his mind, Bitcoin could be a better way to move money, but anyone could copy it in a bunch of different ways, so the idea that Bitcoin had any huge intrinsic value was a joke.

In the final frenzy of the bull market in January 2018, Buffett predicted that crypto assets would definitely have a "bad ending" and said that if he were allowed to buy long-term put options, he would buy five-year put options on every cryptocurrency.

The subsequent market trends seemed to verify Buffett’s judgment for a time. Therefore, at the 2018 Berkshire Buffett Shareholders Meeting, he bluntly expressed his pessimistic attitude towards Bitcoin, saying, "The final outcome of encrypted assets will be very bad , because they do not generate any value related to this asset, and can only wait for others to take over at a higher price."

At the 2019 shareholders' meeting, Buffett said that Bitcoin speculation rekindled the feeling he saw people in Las Vegas: This is a gambling tool, there is a lot of fraud, Bitcoin itself does not generate value, just like shells, it is not an investment for me, people who play Bitcoin will not make a lot of money, Bitcoin is a dehumanizing way .

At the 2020 shareholders' meeting, Buffett's remarks were even more negative, saying that Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies would not generate any real value, and that investing in them was a speculative act, with investors buying them only in the hope that the next buyer would pay more . This was a form of gambling, not an investment, and that Bitcoin was like the tulip bubble, and investors would be dumbfounded when it burst.

At the 2021 shareholders' meeting, Buffett did not answer questions related to Bitcoin , saying that he did not want to make those who were long on Bitcoin sad.

This year, especially recently, Buffett's business partner Charlie Munger has been even more vocal, saying that VC and Bitcoin are a bit over-expanded. He even believes that crypto assets should be banned because they are despicable.

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From investing in gold to increasing investment in Nubank, has the stock god changed his mind?

For practitioners in the crypto industry, Buffett 's resistance to Bitcoin and crypto assets simply stems from his weakness of "unwillingness to invest in new technologies."

Therefore, just as Buffett once regretted missing the opportunity to invest in Google and Amazon, he will sooner or later express regret for his missed opportunity again.

However, in fact, when it comes to changing investment concepts towards new things, Buffett, known as the "God of Stocks", is not the "conservative" person as everyone stereotypes. In fact, once he has determined the direction, he is very good at placing big bets.

Still taking technology stocks as an example, although Buffett did not find Apple until 2016, it is now his largest investment ever, with a value of over $100 billion at one point.

At the same time, the reason why Buffett does not invest in Bitcoin is roughly the same as that for gold - gold and Bitcoin are non-productive assets, that is, they are not assets that can generate value . At the same time, Bitcoin has not yet supported a wide range of uses and demands, so it is a "real bubble", so Buffett's attitude towards gold has always been not to invest.

But it is worth noting that on August 14, 2021, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway rarely sold its 26% stake in Wells Fargo and a certain amount of JPMorgan Chase shares, and purchased nearly 21 million shares of Barrick Gold.

In fact, as early as June 2021, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway invested US$500 million in Nubank, causing Nubank's valuation to soar to US$30 billion. Subsequently, Nubank was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). By December 2021, Berkshire Hathaway's investment return on Nubank was US$150 million.

To some extent, this increase in investment in the secondary market can actually be seen as Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's optimism about Nubank and the Bitcoin ETF behind it.

Therefore, whether Berkshire Hathaway's increased investment in Nubank means that after gold, Buffett's views on crypto assets have also changed , or even whether it will replicate another "Apple story" of Buffett's investment in the crypto industry, is still unknown, but it is very worth looking forward to.

However, if you count carefully, Buffett actually directly held crypto assets as early as two years ago . As early as the dinner between Justin Sun and Buffett in January 2020, Justin Sun gave Buffett a Samsung Galaxy Fold mobile phone with 1 Bitcoin and 1,930,830 TRONs (the numbers represent Buffett's birthday, Buffett was born on August 30, 1930) built in.

It was this mobile phone that made Buffett "passively" become the holder of crypto assets, which he believed to be "rat poison."

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Zhenxiang is never absent in the blockchain industry

Another recent "true fragrance case" worthy of attention is undoubtedly JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO Jamie Dimon has long been a well-known "old swing man" in the encryption field .

Dimon has been attacking Bitcoin in a loud voice for a long time, and even said bluntly, "I personally think Bitcoin is worthless." He also directly banned employees from investing in crypto assets, saying that Bitcoin is a scam and anyone who trades will be fired.

But Dimon also said JPMorgan will offer its clients the opportunity to invest in bitcoin . Dimon made the brief remarks at the annual event of the Institute of International Finance.

On February 15, JPMorgan Chase opened a virtual space, Onyx Lounge, in Decentraland. The name comes from its crypto and blockchain-focused division, Onyx , where users can build virtual spaces and roam around. JPMorgan Chase has thus become the first major bank in the metaverse.

In addition, JPMorgan Chase also released a research report titled "Opportunities in the metaverse" to explore how companies can find opportunities in the metaverse.

Even in November last year, JPMorgan Chase reiterated in a report that the price of Bitcoin is expected to reach $146,000 in the long run, provided that volatility subsides significantly and financial institutions begin to prefer Bitcoin rather than gold in their portfolios.

They say no, but their bodies are very honest for the sake of profit. This is actually a side proof of the growing influence of the crypto industry since 2021.

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summary

In 2021, many landmark events occurred in the crypto market, from the purchase of Bitcoin by listed companies such as Tesla and MicroStrategy in the first half of the year, to the approval of the world's first Bitcoin spot ETF in Canada, to the SEC's approval of the first Bitcoin futures ETF, and in the second half of the year, El Salvador announced that it would make Bitcoin a legal tender.

A strong storm starts with a small ripple. In 2021, Bitcoin's mainstream acceptance has made a breakthrough. In 2022, the speed at which the crypto world advances into the traditional world will most likely exceed imagination, and the prospects are promising.