Warren Buffett Says Crypto Is Just Like Gambling – “People Like To Play The Lottery”
Financial guru Warren Buffett has a lot of thoughts about money – and his opinions on cryptocurrency have notoriously been some of his strongest.
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In recent years, Buffett has compared Bitcoin to a “mirage” and even “rat poison squared,” per Cointelegraph, but in a recent interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week, Buffett had some new thoughts on crypto.
Relating crypto investments to “an explosion of gambling”, the money master said, “I like to bet on a football match if I sit and watch – it makes it more interesting. But I don’t think I want to make a living trying to bet against the house.”
Not only that, but Buffett said the matter becomes more serious when you consider that people are gambling with their paychecks and “don’t really know what they’re doing.” As he said, “the gambling instinct is so strong. . . . You had millions of people who got checks and the money and who were sitting at home and found that they could have a roulette wheel in their house.”
Buffett has previously said he didn’t think Bitcoin would still be around in 10-20 years and believed it had no intrinsic value, though the CNBC host noted that time frame is currently on the table. In addition, Cointelegraph wrote in March that Buffett’s own company, Berkshire Hathaway, saw less growth than Bitcoin over the previous six months.
In fact, Barron’s reported that Bitcoin hit a 10-month high as of April 13, “with the biggest digital asset trading around its highest level since last June after breaking through the key $30,000 level late Monday.” As the article noted, it’s an important development as it “represents where Bitcoin stood last summer before a series of business mistakes in the crypto industry turned a selloff into a brutal bear market.”
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The New York Times also recently reported on the explosion of Bitcoin, calling it “the market’s runaway success story of the year.” The paper noted: “Bitcoin has gained more than 80 percent in price this year, far better than many other assets. The Nasdaq 100, an index of the largest technology stocks, has risen about 20 percent in that period — a strong showing, but far from Bitcoin’s resurgence.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Warren Buffett Says Crypto Is Just Like Gambling – ‘People Like To Play The Lottery’
