Warren Buffett’s Right-Hand Man Praises China for Banning Cryptocurrencies

Charlie Munger, the American billionaire investor who serves as Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman, applauded the Chinese government’s decision to ban cryptocurrencies during his appearance at the Sohn Hearts and Minds on Dec. 3, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.   

At the same time, Munger chided the U.S. and other English-speaking countries for not following China’s suit:
 
I think the Chinese made the correct decision, which is to simply ban them. My country – English-speaking civilisation – has made the wrong decision.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell have both recently confirmed that the U.S. had no plans to follow China’s suit by prohibiting cryptocurrencies.   

The 98-year-old investor wishes cryptocurrencies were never created in the first place, asserting that they will never be part of his portfolio:   

I’m never going to buy a cryptocurrency. I wish they’d never been invented.

Munger is convinced that cryptocurrency issuers are only driven by their own selfish interests.

Speaking of the current state of the market, the famed value investor says that it’s even more insane than the dot-com mania in the late 90s:

I think the dot com boom was crazier in terms of valuations than even what we have now. But overall, I consider this era even crazier than the dot-com era.

In late February, Munger compared Bitcoin and Tesla to “a louse and a flea.”

Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is also known as a harsh crypto critic who believes that Bitcoin has zero value. In February 2019, the “Orache of Omaha” said that blockchain was important:   

It’s ingenious and blockchain is important but Bitcoin has no unique value at all, it doesn’t produce anything. You can stare at it all day and no little Bitcoins come our or anything like that. It’s a delusion basically.