Charlie Munger sees bitcoin as a stink ball
Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger attacked bitcoin again during an interview with the Wall Street Journal. One of the questions asked of the 99-year-old was whether he was concerned about the recent rise in the price of bitcoin.
“Of course it worries me,” he replied. “I have a lot of very simple basic ideas that I think every educated person should have. These ideas include what Adam Smith taught everyone… To achieve these Smithian results, you need a currency to facilitate trade. And for the currency to be widely accepted, the trick we used is for the State to issue it.”
Munger added: “The only way we know how to go from hunter-gatherer to civilized is to have a hard currency. It could be shellfish, it could be corn, it could be a lot of things. It can be gold coins, it can be promises in banking systems like the ones we have in the United States and England, and so on. underlined the Berkshire manager:
“If you start creating an artificial currency… you're throwing your stink ball into a recipe that's been around for a long time and has worked very well for a lot of people.”
Munger has long been a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies, particularly bitcoin. Last month, the Berkshire executive warned that most crypto investments would go to zero and called bitcoin “the stupidest investment” he had ever seen.
Previously, he called BTC “rat poison” and compared its trading to “crap.” In February he said: “It's ridiculous that anyone would buy this kind of thing… It's indescribable, it's absolute horror, and I'm ashamed for my country that so many people believe in this kind of bullshit and the government lets it happen.”
Last July, he said he wouldn't touch crypto and advised everyone to “avoid it as if it were an open channel full of malicious organisms.” He also compared cryptocurrencies to “a sexually transmitted disease” and spoke in favor of governments banning them. He further wished that crypto “had never been invented” and noted that “this whole damn development is disgusting and goes against the interests of civilization.”
What do you think of Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger's statement comparing bitcoin to a stink-ball among traditional currencies? Let us know in the comments.