Peter Thiel calls Warren Buffett bitcoin’s ‘enemy number one’
Billionaire venture capital Peter Theil on Thursday said that American tycoon Warren Buffett is Bitcoin’s “Enemy number one.” Theil was speaking at a bitcoin conference held in Miami, Florida.
According to Theil, Buffett tops an “enemies l” of people who are trying to stop the cryptocurrency. “Thiel said to a booing Miami crowd that Buffet is “the sociopathic grandpa from Omaha,” as quoted CNBC. “Let’s expose them,” he told the crowd.
PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has stated several times in the past that he regrets for not investing enough in Bitcoin. “I feel like I’ve been underinvested in it,” Thiel told conference attendees according to a Bloomberg report. He said he thought everyone already knew the so-called secret about the cryptocurrency. But, “maybe it still is enough of a secret,” he said.
For unversed, Warren Buffett has a well-known reputation for investing in stocks whose value and cash flow — come from producing things. But cryptocurrencies don’t have real value, Buffett said in a CNBC interview in 2020. “They don’t reproduce, they can’t mail you a check, they can’t do anything, and what you hope is that somebody else comes along and pays you more money for them later on, but then that person’s got the problem. It does not meet the test of a currency,” the billionaire said, as quoted CNBC in 2014.
“It is not a durable means of exchange, it’s not a store of value.” He added that while cryptocurrency it’s a very effective way of anonymously transmitting money.
But he also drew an analogy with cheques, saying that they too are a way of transmitting money, but should be they be worth a whole lot, simply because of the ability to transmit money.
Meanwhile, not just Buffet but Jamie Dimon, the head of financial giant JPMorgan Chase & Co., also called out Bitcoin “a fraud.” Dimon isn’t a fan of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency market value. “I personally think that bitcoin is worthless,” Dimon was quoted CNBC as saying. But, “I don’t want to be a spokesperson — I don’t care. It makes no difference to me,” Dimon said. “Our clients are adults. They disagree. That’s what makes markets. So, if they want to have access to buy yourself bitcoin, we can’t custody it but we can give them legitimate, as clean as possible, access.”