Buffett U-turns on ‘rat poison,’ pours in $1bn
Four years after calling Bitcoin “rat poison squared” and warning investors against it, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has purchased $1 billion in shares of a digital bank named NuBank, a Brazil-based crypto-friendly start-up.
That’s according to the latest Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by Buffett’s company.
Berkshire Hathaway also purchased a $500-million stake in NuBank several months before it went public in December 2021. The lender raised $2.6 billion in its New York IPO, valuing the fintech firm at over $40 billion.
Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and CEO, has been one of the most active critics of cryptocurrencies. The billionaire investor had previously bashed bitcoin for being an asset that “does not create anything.”
He also called the cryptocurrency “rat poison” and said that bitcoin stands for nothing more than a “delusion that attracts charlatans”.
Buffett’s longtime partner and Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger has said he wished cryptocurrency had never been invented and also described digital currency as “beneath contempt.”
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