Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has been one of Bitcoin's most vocal critics. Here's every time the "Oracle of Omaha" has declared Bitcoin dead or worthless.
"Bitcoin is a gambling token, and it doesn’t have any intrinsic value."
"Cryptocurrencies basically have no value and they don't produce anything. 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. In terms of value: zero."
"“It’s a gambling device… there’s been a lot of frauds connected with it. There’s been disappearances, so there’s a lot lost on it. Bitcoin hasn’t produced anything,” Buffett told a group of reporters ahead of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska. “It doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. It’s like a seashell or something, and that is not an investment to me,” he added."
"“Bitcoin has no unique value at all,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in a “Squawk Box” interview Monday. “It is a delusion, basically.”"
"If you and I buy various cryptocurrencies, they're not going to multiply. There are not going to be a bunch of rabbits sitting there in front of us. They're just gonna sit there. And I gotta hope next time you get more excited after I've bought if from you and then I'll get more excited and buy it from you. We could sit in the house by ourselves and we could keep running up the price between us. But at the end of the time there's one Bitcoin sitting there and now we've gotta find somebody else. They come to an end."
"Bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared."
"In terms of cryptocurrencies generally, I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending. If I could buy a five-year put on every one of the cryptocurrencies, I'd be glad to do it, but I would never short a dime's worth."
"People get excited from big price movements, and Wall Street accommodates…you can’t value Bitcoin because it’s not a value-producing asset.” It’s a “real bubble."
Buffett believes in investing in companies that produce value and generate cash flow. Bitcoin doesn't produce anything, making it incompatible with his investment philosophy.
Buffett famously called Bitcoin "gambling" and "speculation," not investing. He prefers assets with intrinsic value and predictable returns.