Why Warren Buffett steers clear of bitcoin

Legendary value investor Warren Buffett is still dismissive of bitcoin as an investment. He laid out his latest thinking on the cryptocurrency in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance (Warren Buffett on buying bitcoin: ‘That is not investing’, April 28, 2018).

“If you buy something like a farm, an apartment house, or an interest in a business… You can do that on a private basis… And it’s a perfectly satisfactory investment. You look at the investment itself to deliver the return to you. Now, if you buy something like bitcoin or some cryptocurrency, you don’t really have anything that has produced anything. You’re just hoping the next guy pays more.”

The Berkshire Hathaway chairman said: “You aren’t investing when you do that (buy cryptocurrency). You’re speculating. There’s nothing wrong with it. If you wanna gamble somebody else will come along and pay more money tomorrow, that’s one kind of game. That is not investing.”

The late Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, said in his book The Intelligent Investor: “An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”