Bitcoin Forum

The clip over at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zh_9cBQSYU

While I have great respect for Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, it feels like they have missed the boat on Bitcoin - leaving a lot of money on the table as it were. They have famously avoided tech stocks until investing in Apple relatively late and it seems they have gotten increasingly risk adverse in their old age. Personally I think that Bitcoin is an artificial substitute for gold and that is actually a good thing. Having some gold coins myself during Covid, I have sold them face-to-face in the past but most businesses were closed during this time and it simply doesn't feel safe sending such high value items through the post - Bitcoin does not face such a problem. Of course Gold has practical physical world uses as well, but the majority is kept in the form of jewelry or investment grade forms. I find it funny that Charlie seems to have mellowed a bit on it, I'm sure he has labelled it evil in the past..

and it will be more dangerous if your house is full of gold, robbers will feel attracted to enter. whereas in bitcoin when the thieves enter, what will they take. secret seed? while you keep it in your head or on a piece of personal note paper. would a thief be suspicious? of course not !!!!

Charlie and Warren at the age of getting older still insist that they don't want to accept and realize everything. maybe they don't have an heir who likes bitcoin? need to be questioned. because in their hearts Charlie and Warren recognized Bitcoin and the future of crypto assets. maybe they were both just embarrassed to say it.

Let them be. We'll see where they will move their assets with this prolonged pandemic and continued fiat printing.

And here I am thinking he stepped it up a notch from Peter's "BTC is a fool's gold" by not only calling it substitute but also artificial hehe. I tried to search but what came up was rat poison and not evil.

I wouldn't say that bitcoin is the artificial substitute for gold as there is a cryptocurrency that is the real artificial substitute for gold. If bitcoin is really the artificial substitute then why does bitcoin is not accepted in some country since gold is accepted by all people. Some people are even hiding from their government that they own some bitcoin.

That's not the most interesting quote in that interview IMO. He stated:

"Bitcoin won't be the medium of exchange for the world." This is still too premature if he thinks BTC cannot be developed to have fast transactions and low fees. The best thing about technology is, it can rapidly change.

"The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable." Not sure what it means. I think it means bad people chasing useless stuff.

About gold, he is not a gold bug, so ask Schiff instead ;D

I think we're very, very far away from the moment when low fees and fast confirmations are going to be a constant reality. Remember that anything coming up as a new proposal for BTC is going to need at least a few months, if not years, to be added for real to the protocol - and even if the new stuff is considered safe enough regarding potential flaws, there is a very strong and large audience of Bitcoin maximalists which will oppose the proposed feature(s). This will end up as a yet another fork. BTC vs BCH reloaded.

I think bitcoin is a digital asset more than a gold in digital gorm, for instance
+ Gold biggest value is that of it's physical appearance, in time past it was kept solely for beautification and in possession of the very wealthy, who did not have any intention to sell, I think bitcoin isn't like that.
+ The rate of Gold increase and it's decrease is lesser than that of Bitcoin's increase and decrease.
 Although I think if bitcoin was to be in physical form or appearance it should be in Gold form just to show it's worth and value.

I don't think bitcoin was created for the purpose of replacing previous payment system like gold or fiat. Bitcoin was created to help users manage their own money without the interference of any government and authorities. Bitcoin is also not made to compete with other investment asset, pure bitcoin is a decentralized payment system. We have a different innovation on bitcoin from the banking system. Let him continue his thought and belief, we know that bitcoin is more useful than just a new currency phenomenon.

Uh, I don't think so.  I have great respect for both of them, and they know what they're doing and they don't need to get involved in an asset that's as unproven and volatile as bitcoin.  They stick to what they do best, which is value investing.  Everyone here is bullish on bitcoin, but I always keep in mind that it's like an echo chamber on the forum most of the time, and that's how bubbles form.  Warren Buffett didn't invest in internet stocks when they were going crazy in the 90s, and he missed out on making some very easy money.  He also missed out on the huge crash in April 2000.  Again, he knows what he's doing and so does Charlie Munger.

Regarding Munger's comparison of bitcoin to gold, it seems to me that's a sentiment that's been floating around for years.  I'm thinking about how many threads I've seen asking which is better or otherwise arguing how bitcoin and gold are similar, and there have been so many of those it's ridiculous.  Ultimately it doesn't matter what any one person thinks (even if it's a brainy investor like Munger); bitcoin and gold do have some similarities, but they're completely different things.

It's always compared to gold years ago and the first one was digital gold or new gold in this age. And for those old successful investors, they really won't be able to catch up with the tech stocks because they're living traditionally and don't understand what's in it.
I guess after just a few years from now, with all of those negative statements from these popular and successful investors who have said negatively about bitcoin, they'll change.

Substitute?
Artificial?

It is indeed an investment of a very high tier like Gold but substitute is something which is of the same category but when we are talking about bitcoins and Gold they are way different. But Gold is actually something which is way localized and have a lot of market limitations.

Bitcoins is something of the future and the good thing is we are able to invest in it at present, people who compare gold and bitcoins do think that there is no option available to invest other than traditional Investments , but let us understand the fact that Mining ⛏️ is not Mining 💻 !! Did these people even do a research?

Plus digital gold is Centralized, it's controlled and you don't have 100% ability to make any decision in it's regard so therefore I do not think that it's even comparable to decentralized bitcoins where we can do whatever we want without any middle party. There is no waiting time to sell and hold the stocks also. But some companies are trying to control it like that which honestly makes me uneasy.

Exactly, they are just putting in action what they are saying, don't invest in something that you don't understand, honestly, we don't really need to hear their opinions about bitcoin because it is going to be the same old thing that they are going to say and I don't think that they will change that and if you are following them then you should probably stop investing because you don't think for yourself and you always seek other's validation.

It wasn't, it's just that these people who thinks that bitcoin is the cure all that thinks that it will replace the current system, satoshi dreamt of an alternative not a replacement, if he did dreamt so, he would have created more bitcoin.

Even the most successful investor can't be right all the time with his decisions so if there are people who doesn't recognize their bitcoin but still their are successful then its pretty normal. But want to say something still the boats are waiting for them, the prices are literally low since the crypto adoption is in early phase so they can bag profits even if they change their decisions now.

In my perspective, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger might have intentionally missed the boat or decided to be left out by the train.  As we know it, they don’t even need Bitcoin to get more wealth.  These people aren't a master of cryptocurrencies but they are the masters of traditional finance.  And If I were them as well, I would better stick with the field I'm used to as I have paid a lot of struggles, pain, and disappoints already before I mastered it.

These people have a lot of things to do on a daily basis.  That’s why I think they couldn’t give enough time to study cryptocurrency.  One perspective is, their allies and investors are against bitcoin as it is a threat to their business. So If that’s the case, they would better stick to usual IMO.

Why would they miss the boat? The point of Bitcoin is to store wealth. They have wealth and can be stored in Bitcoin. Bitcoin will be very useful for both Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett in the near future. Right now is still very early. But once hyperinflation kicks in things will start roll much faster.

Btc is Gold in what sense exactly? Gold is neither as volatile as btc and nor its going up constantly. Gold is being traded at its 2013 price while btc is at its ATH and getting new ATH's. I see no similarities between gold and bitcoin tbh. Gold has nearly unlimited supply too. Asteroids, the earth core, sea water all filled with gold.

I guess the confusion is from the term 'Digital Gold' but he should already know this is just a way of describing btc superiority and not because it has any similarities to Gold, am surprise he is even making such statement because nothing about btc display any similar nature with gold. The guy can't seem to tell the difference between btc and gold even when it is very clear.

They have their reasons for avoiding Tech stocks as they identified them as a bubble and it was a fact that those years were termed as the Dot Com bubble and we know what happened the bubble burst and many lost their money while anyone who entered early made their profit as well.
So you cannot blame them completely and we will see the same situation in the cryptocurrency market as well.


I just like to see them as virtual currency and not adding any other addition meaning to it  ;D.

I don't know his reason entirely why he isn't buying any Gold, and there shouldn't be any reason why not to buy it as well. He wants people to follow his views on Gold and Bitcoin by not buying them, and I don't think it's ever going to change anytime soon. They are scared of something they don't know, and they want to be out of it. I don't know about Gold though, it's a great asset to have, but maybe they would stick to jewelry pieces, etc.

Isn't the term, substitute for Gold is already a good thing? It's not physical but the idea of having it is what makes it valuable? To be demanded?

They haven't missed the boat because they were never going to get on the boat. They don't invest in assets that don't produce income like gold and bitcoin, they've never been interested in that and it's never been part of their investment universe. They invest in companies that generate cashflow and profit, because that's what they know how to value.

Very right. They have their own perspectives when it comes to business. And also, they are already old to change their stance on what they believe in. They already lived their life in full, nothing much to regret, I guess. Whether they jump on board in bitcoin or not, they are still rich in their own ways. Just leave this to the new generation. They already done their part in this world. They know what they are doing, why they reached their status in life. So who are we to question their way of doing business?

We don't need their opinions but it's always the media that are publishing every word they say even if it's a nonsense thing. The media is the one to blame because they know that it will get their attention if they're going to do that against the bitcoin community.
Also, they are public people who'll have media to cover their words everywhere they go at any time.

That's plain silly. The media reports what they say because it's newsworthy because of who the are and what they've done. Their opinions aren't nonsense because you disagree with them. I don't know why this community gets themselves so worked up over Buffet and Munger not being fans of bitcoin. Y'all gotta let it go, it doesn't even matter.

I don't like when people compare Bitcoin to gold or call it digital gold. Both assets are to different to be competitors or substitutions.

I think sometimes the news seems to deviate from reality for some purpose. and of course, with the news it will affect the psychology of traders. therefore it depends on us personally in filtering out the news that really happened

I don't know how there are so many people in this thread who resent the comparison to gold. Saylor himself says that Bitcoin is gold 2.0. Bitcoin is to gold what email is to mail.

What it does seem is that he says it in a slightly derogatory way, but you have to think that he doesn't need the Bitcon to get rich, and that he is at the end of his life already.

Yeah he is quite old and probably has no big stake in bitcoins. But still at his age to be involved with cryptos is remarkable. Comparing email and mail to bitcoin and gold is great. Sending mail is a logistical nightmare, the same goes dir storing physical gold. Having an online based alternative is just the way to go. Which doesn't mean that gold is going to disappear. In today's world we need Mail and Email, like we need gold and bitcoins.

Charlie Munger did say that Bitcoin is like artificial substitute for Gold, but he also said in this interview that he never purchased any Gold and he is not recommending anyone to do it, and same thing applies for Bitcoin.
We couldn't expect anything more from 97 year old man and Warren Buffett partner, who thinks that central banks and fiat money is best invention in human history.
Worth mentioning that he also hates Tesla and he is not sure what is worse for him Bitcoin or Tesla stock, he said that professional investors who enters crypto market are disgusting, and his partner Warren Buffett said that Bitcoin is rat poison.

Actually if Bitcoin has a robust self-sustaining economy, participants/users wouldn't worry too much about what Business men who are used to the traditional financial systems have to say.
Though I agree that the volatility aspect needs to be checked to make it a good medium of exchange and not just store of value

While I wouldn't dare argue against the fact bitcoin does have quite a lot of benefits over gold,just like OP mentioned, it would be illogical and unfair on our part not to realise that gold does have its own value.
While I also understand that these old folks are actually missing out by not getting on the train of bitcoin, let's not forget the fact that they actually got their wealth without bitcoin.
They invested in gold, stock and real estate and they made their fortune. I believe we should not beat ourselves up on this. If bitcoin works well for you, do it.

Now it will be different, now thieves, knowing that a person owns bitcoin, will steal it, torture it for a long time in order to find out the private key. But then what they will do with him is ambiguous. Those. the time has passed when thieves were waiting for the absence of the owners of the house, now they will just be interested in meeting with the owner of the private keys and passwords from the wallet!
I hope you will treat this with humor :)

If this person meant this as an insult or as a way to put down bitcoin then they do not really understand bitcoin at all, of course bitcoin is an artificial substitute for gold, gold is an element present at nature and originates naturally so humans have nothing to do with it, bitcoin cannot be found in nature and it is just the result of abstract mathematics, so of course it is artificial, but make no mistake its properties make it better than even the purest gold and that is where it resides its utility and value.

artifical means "made by man" so in this case I believe bitcoin is "artificial".

And yes, there is no point comparing bitcoin but gold is a good example for bitcoin to overcome and surpass. Actually many people care about what his opinions are and I am not an exception. If a wise man has considered bitcoin as a substitute for gold, there will be a large parts of community start to accept the term

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Old man is old man. They might succeed in the past, but now they are building their legacy and the fundamental for us to take over the economy. It is easy to understand why they have missed many opporutnities related to the complex technology

Gold is a stable asset and bitcoin is highly volatile. For this reason I think the comparasion between both isn't accurated. An investor looking for bitcoin investment has a different goal from an investor looking for gold investment. Their investment categories are very different and far from each other.
A good analogy for artifical gold would be a stable low risk investment which keeps its value without much fluctuations. That is definitely not bitcoin.

I've learned through watching and reading stuff about Buffett & Munger over the years that their words can be a bit misleading sometimes. For example they are always saying that "diversification is protection against ignorance" when trying to warn people about investing in many companies, however Berkshire Hathaway itself is just a collection of diversified companies. The same with gold - they say it is a non-productive asset and talk it down, but they have traded large amounts of silver recently which would fall into the same precious metals category. Another example is Buffett's partnership with 3G venture (or vulture?) capitalists who have gutted many decent companies, but in the past Buffett has always claimed to be a good steward rather than trying to squeeze every penny out of a business. You have to be very wary about the mismatch between their words and their actions, they might be opportunists or have a deeper unseen meaning in what they are saying.

It's okay, elderly people of old age do not like modern, sophisticated things and always prefer the old things that they are used to, it is very difficult for them to change things that they are accustomed to for long periods of time.
For me, I consider bitcoin better than gold in many practical aspects, for example gold needs a safe place to store and protect it and this costs a lot of money, also you need to transfer it physically if you want to sell or buy it, as for Bitcoin, you can store billions of dollars on a small wallet that can be Carrying it in your pocket as well as transporting and storing it does not cost any money. In addition, you do not need to transfer it physically, but the transfer is made to anywhere in the world within minutes via the Internet.

It's interesting that when asked about digital wallets like paypal and Bitcoin he immediately focused on Bitcoin and ignored the rest.
Maybe this really is an interesting subject to him and people like him. Maybe they are really more worried about Bitcoin being a decentralized form of money.

He also said he's not interested in gold so he's not interested in bitcoin. If people really start seeing Bitcoin as gold that's easy to hold and exchange, it's going to be perfect.

I have to say this is both not a bad thing, and also I understand why they did not care for bitcoin as well. Remember these are 90 year old people, they are too old and they buy stocks like gilette, coca cola, apple, like very known and widely used stuff, those are stocks we all know that will continue forever, there is a very slight chance they could bankrupt, it is obvious that 99.99% chance they will just keep growing bigger and bigger.

They never really took a risk, they just keep working and working and working just to find something that is globally used and a huge corporation, that is not really a big smart decision to make a profit, and his return rates are not big enough to actually deserve him the recognition but since he did that for nearly 70 years he gets recognition. Long story short it would be contrary to anything they have ever done if they invested into bitcoin.

In reality, things are much more complicated than some describe here. Bitcoin and gold have their own advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, in terms of their characteristics, they are more diametrically opposite than they have any similarities. They are actually united only by the high price, but in all other respects they differ sharply from each other. It makes no sense to describe their distinctive characteristics. If we consider the price, then Bitcoin loses here, no matter how high its price compared to gold. Gold has an almost constant value. As for bitcoin, its high price volatility overlaps with all of its really good other characteristics. We have no guarantees that there will be no situation that tomorrow we will wake up and see that the bitcoin price has dropped to $ 20,000 again, or even to $ 10,000.

No part of this is the news deviating from reality. Munger and Buffet expressed negative sentiments about bitcoin, the news reported it, a bunch of people on these boards threw tantrums over it. That all happened. My point is only that people need to stop working themselves up into a tizzy over what Buffet and Munger say because it doesn't matter.

In my case I am looking bitcoin and gold in different perspective. I don't think bitcoin could be known as an artificial because bitcoin has its own purpose. Gold has its own purpose too. But the approach of dealing in bitcoin and gold was also different. But both thing were used as an investment too and both worthy in value. But today bitcoin's worth are too high and varies as time goes by. However, gold was worth it too but with a constant value. And as an investor we'll probably wanted to have a constant ROI than taking risks for a varrying ROI right.

I'm not seeing the term artificial in negative way; when gold is natural then anything as digital gold must be made from other way which could be interpreted as artificial; nothing wrong bitcoin being an artificial substitute for gold; still I'm seeing they are accepting bitcoin as a substitute for gold which must be very big victory for bitcoin.

Gold is known for its consistent return over long period of holding whereas bitcoin is slowly moving toward such a status in alternate investment category. So, I strongly believe calling bitcoin as an substrate for gold definitely will lead bitcoin into more adoption which might be ending up mainstream adoption as well.

I think that bitcoin is one click above gold. Bitcoin has a better advantage than gold, because the security level of bitcoin is more safety. Gold has its form and it is possible to transfer ownership by illegal means (theft). While bitcoins are unlikely to be stolen.

Lots of people have been comparing Bitcoin with gold over the years but as for me, Bitcoin has a different function and it's not just a substitute for gold. We should know how it made our lives more convenient especially when it comes to digital transactions as well as profitable investments. Bitcoin is multifunctional and everyone who has it has a huge chance of having financial freedom in the future compared to those who are holding gold for such a long time.

Of course they are worried about bitcoin and what it can achieve, they are not worried about PayPal or any other payment form because they know those platforms do not really aspire to be anything more than a way to settle payments over the Internet and nothing more, bitcoin has the express purpose of becoming a form of money so this is a threat to their monopoly and what it is even worse for them is that it is untouchable as there is no central server they can confiscate to destroy it and this makes them incredibly nervous about the future of their fiat currencies.

I don't think this is really accurate. Gold is known for protecting wealth, not growing it. It is at time very volatile, and the investment returns are absolutely sub-standard compared to the stock market. In times of uncertainty, people flock to gold to protect the wealth they have because it is considered safer than holding cash or other assets, but people who "invest" in gold expecting a return are paying a high opportunity cost by not investing in the stock market, which blows gold out of the water in terms of return.

Atleast now they agree that this is a substitute of gold earlier they weren't even agreeing to this. I think it's difficult for them to digest something picking up value especially something which isn't good as per their investment model. Warren buffet thinks of value investing which is based entirely on business of the companies. Bitcoin has no such thing which is why he finds it difficult to fit this thing in his rule book. They are big investors who have been investing and getting profit using their rule book for ages now it's almost impossible for them to change their mindset. So we should ignore them and focus on what fits our own rule book.

Bitcoin can only be the world's new store of value like gold with the same Stock to Flow model.
It cannot be said that Bitcoin is new gold because the applied value of each asset is completely different.
Gold has more applications in life, gold is indispensable in the cultural life of some Asian countries, gold makes an important contribution to the electronics manufacturing industry ...

While you are right many of those that are investing in gold with the intention of getting a lot of profits are doing so with the intention of benefiting greatly when the circumstances that you are describing actually appear, gold has the tendency to not move much but when it does it has a huge volatility not much different than what we see in the market of cryptocurrencies, and the people investing in gold for this purpose do so because they do not want to miss that movement no matter what and they are willing to be in the market for decades if necessary.

gold in the sense of a reserve of value that has a daily trading volume that is pretty much irrelevant to the total volume of gold in existance, that is kept as a sign of strength, widely accepted for payments (not exactly, but anyway widely accepted a valuable), limited in supply (in fact bitcoin is more limited than gold), kept mostly by strong hands that are not selling at penies on dollar ever.

I think the comparison is quite clear and that bitcoin is establishing itself as an alternative asset that behaves like precious metals... perhaps you could argue that as a "rare mineral" due to voltility.