Should Warren's Advice On Cryptocurrency Get You Worried

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It is very often in one’s best interest to take advice from the elderly in society. It is even greater good when the person giving the advice is a well accomplished person in whatever field he or she is speaking of. But sometimes things just aren’t the way they may say or see them to be; there could always be very slight differences in ideas and perspectives that could change the entire meaning of everything. In such cases, one gets even more confused with having to choose between listening to the advice or not. Well the cryptocurrency world is also facing a similar problem with what uh would call the “Buffet Conundrum”.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO and the man known as Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, recently said that he wasn’t going to invest in bitcoin and that cryptocurrencies were sure to have a bad ending. He stated that he had no bitcoins and had no intentions of owning any in the future. These were his words in an interview

“In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending… We don’t own any, we’re not short any, we’ll never have a position in them. I get into enough trouble with the things I think I know something about. Why in the world should I take a long or short position in something I don’t know about?”

Why Should Warren Have Investors Concerned

Judging by how accurate most of Warren’s predictions about investments and businesses have been, most people have become a bit concerned as to whether to go into the cryptocurrency investment circle or just steer clear. Warren’s words have been known to send ripples in the stock market over the years, but that had not really been the case this time around – at least so far. Bitcoin is still battling with the same $13,000-$16,000 fight for the past three weeks, Ethereum is holding up well above $1,000 and Litecoin to is as steadfast as always above $200. So basically, the cryptocurrency market is just faring well even after the “Oracle’s” words. That definitely is a sign that people don’t take the words of oracles as serious as they used to back in ancient Greece.

This is not the first time that the second richest man on the planet has shrugged any talk of cryptocurrencies. Back in 2014 he called bitcoin, in particular, a “mirage” and warned that people should stay away from it. And he is not the first influential figure we have seen label cryptocurrencies as scams. Jamie Dimon of J.P Morgan Chase touted bitcoin as a “fraud”, but recently we saw Jamie have a change of heart when he stated that he was sorry for calling bitcoin a fraud.

Buffet on the other hand suggested that he would rather bet against bitcoin than to invest in it. This clearly shows his stance on cryptocurrencies – it’s definitely a no-go area to him in terms of prospective investments. He said that he would be pleased to buy five-year put options on each of the five main cryptocurrencies. (Put options allow you to bet against assets such that you gain more profit returns on your bet as that assets loses value).

But What If…

What If Buffet is all but right. What if this time around the oracle actually is wrong. For investors who are still concerned about Warren’s statements, well, we have seen instances where Buffet has been not very supportive of new technologies which have in turn become a grounded in the real world and everyday lives. For instance, during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting last year May we heard Buffet express his regret for not having invested in Google (now Alphabet) and Amazon in their very early days – a thing that has greatly cost him much returns. It appears to be the case that maybe the fly in the ointment for the Wall Street maestro’s investment policies is his bearish attitude towards new technologies.

Featured Image via Express UK