Is Bitcoin no Longer a ‘Rat Poison’ to Warren Buffett?

It seems like the increasing popularity of Bitcoin has made Warren Buffett, flip back on his words.

It seems like the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies and blockchain has made one of the greatest investors of all time, Warren Buffett, flip back on his words. In 2018 at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, Buffett called bitcoin "probably rat poison squared" and warned investors against it, Buffett has taken a U-turn and invested one billion dollars in a crypto-friendly bank.

The US$1 Billion Investment

Berkshire Hathaway made its crypto investment public with an SEC filing earlier this week. It revealed that Buffett's company had purchased US$1 billion in shares of Nubank, a digital bank based in Brazil, and the largest of its kind in Latin America.

Nubank is a so-called neobank, a type of bank that operates outside of the rules of the traditional banking system. The 'crypto friendly' digital bank's investment unit, NuInvest, allows users to put money in a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF)—tapping a financial space that Berkshire's leaders have shown little love for.

Not The First Investment In The 'Crypto-Friendly Bank'

Shockingly, this most recent speculation by Buffett's organization in Nubank is not the first time they have dabbled in this market. Last year, Berkshire had effectively purchased a US$500 million stake in Nubank, months before the organization opened up to the world in December 2021.

Around then, Nubank had reported that this Berkshire speculation had been the biggest single venture the fintech bank had ever received.

And keeping in mind that Berkshire was increasing its interests into the crypto sphere in 2021, the organization likewise dropped a portion of its other, more customary monetary resources. In the very late SEC documenting that showed the US$1 billion interest in Nubank, Berkshire likewise uncovered that it had dropped more than US$3 billion in its portions of Visa and Mastercard.

In spite of this new advance by Buffett's organization towards crypto, his long-time partner and Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger has been very vocal with regards to his position against the digital currency.