Charlie Munger, a billionaire investor, is still a skeptic about Bitcoin.
According to The Australian Financial Review, Munger said at the Sohn conference in Sydney on Friday, “I wish they’d never been invented.”
“I appreciate the Chinese, and I believe they made the right decision in banning them,” Munger continued.
Interest in digital assets has soared this year, with the cryptocurrency market temporarily topping a market value of $3 trillion in November and leading coins such as bitcoin reaching new highs.
This isn’t a new viewpoint for Berkshire Hathaway’s 97-year-old vice chairman. During a Q&A session at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting in May, Munger said that the Covid-19 outbreak had strengthened his dislike for bitcoin.
“Of course, I despise bitcoin’s rise to prominence,” he remarked. “I don’t enjoy handing over your extra billions of dollars to someone who just made up a new financial product out of thin air, nor do I like handing over your extra billions of dollars to somebody who just made up a new financial product out of thin air.”
“I suppose I should state gently that the entire dang development is terrible and anti-civilization,” Munger continued.
Bitcoin proponents, of course, would disagree with Munger. Bitcoin, they say, is a store of value that can be used to protect against inflation. They would argue that bitcoin is a reliable peer-to-peer payment system.
Munger, on the other hand, has constantly chastised bitcoin for its high volatility.
“It’s more or less a man-made gold alternative.” And as I never buy gold, I never buy bitcoin,” Munger stated at the Daily Journal’s annual shareholders meeting in February. “Bitcoin makes me think of Oscar Wilde’s remark about fox hunting.” He described it as “the unspeakable’s quest of the uneatable.”
According to Coin Metrics, Bitcoin is presently selling at roughly $56,085, with a market cap of over $1 trillion.
