It used to be that you couldn’t talk about politics or religion at the dinner table (or in polite company, depending on where you live), without fear of inciting a bitter argument with friends and family. Now you have to avoid discussing bitcoin, too, and specifically, discussing its legitimacy… or lack thereof.
For whatever reason, most everyone’s got an opinion on the matter, and like 2016’s divisive Presidential election, those opinions are usually strong ones.
And yet, despite the inflammatory potential of pointing it out, it has to be mentioned that perhaps the greatest investor of all-time is once again poking holes in the very premise of bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — and no one is actually refuting them.
There’s admittedly a certain irony to reprising the usually given flaws of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin prices were up 38% in April, marking the best month for the digital money so far this year, and bringing it back from the brink of collapse of just a month earlier. In the meantime, Goldman Sachs has decided to become a bitcoin trading middleman.
Yes, this is the same Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) headed up by Lloyd Blankfein, who in November said of the cryptocurrency “I don’t like it. I’m not comfortable with it.” In his defense, facilitating bitcoin trading and betting on bitcoin itself are two different things. The latter is a coin toss, while the former is essentially acting like ‘the house’ in Las Vegas and picking off a few pennies for yourself from every bet that’s made. Still, it’s a decision that adds credibility to a movement that desperately needs some.
Warren Buffett’s thoughts arguably still resonate with investors more than any other individual’s, however, and he’s still confident that cryptocurrencies are nothing more than a mirage.
“If you buy something like bitcoin or some cryptocurrency, you don’t have anything that is producing anything. You’re just hoping the next guy pays more. And you only feel you’ll find the next guy to pay more if he thinks he’s going to find someone that’s going to pay more,” adding (just to make sure his point was made) “You aren’t investing when you do that, you’re speculating.”
A Brilliant Analogy
Much like the quintessential grandfather he is though, the Oracle of Omaha explained his stance with a tangible example. Buffett went on to say:
“If you buy something [like] a farm, an apartment house or an interest in a business and look to the asset itself to determine whether you’ve done something — what the farm produces, what the business earns… it’s a perfectly satisfactory investment. You look at the investment itself to deliver the return to you. If you ban trading in farms, you could still buy farms, and have a perfectly decent investment… if you ban trading in… bitcoin, which nobody knows exactly what it is, people would say, ‘Well why in the world would I buy it?'”
His point is well made. Ownership of a farm rather than a farm stock still gives you the benefit of selling what that farm produces, even if it’s not as liquid as equities are. If bitcoin trading was to cease altogether, what would you ‘do’ with the bitcoins you owned?
You could do something with them, to be clear. Their value is entirely arbitrary though, and thus far their value has almost been entirely propped up by FOMO… the fear of missing out.
Something else Buffett didn’t mention in the interview with Yahoo Finance was the notion of scarcity. Money has value becomes there’s a limited supply of it. Gold has value — albeit a wobbly one sometimes — because it’s scarce. Ditto for stocks.
But there will only be a limited number of bitcoins in circulation once they’re all mined? That’s absolutely true. There can be an infinite number of rival cryptocurrencies created though, each of which diminished the total price-supporting demand for previously created digital currencies. The world, however, is incapable of making more land or gold, and governments aren’t willing to issue infinite amounts of currency.
NYU economist Nouriel Roubini used a slightly less grandfatherly eloquence than Buffett at the recent Milken Institute Global Conference, though he feels the same for the same reason. He said of bitcoin “it’s just bulls**t.”
It’s not Shakespeare, to be sure, but that doesn’t make Roubini wrong.
Bottom Line for Bitcoin
To be clear, none of this is to suggest bitcoin trading is evil, or that bitcoin prices are destined to plunge five minutes from now. If anything, the cryptocurrency has more than proven it can keep people convinced enough that it’s real to maintain some semblance of value.
Buffett is absolutely right, though. With no actual intrinsic value, no centralized control intended to curb volatility, no physical (or practical) limit on the number of alternative digital currencies that can be created, and an unregulated marketplace that invites fraud and abuse with no recourse, bitcoin doesn’t have a particularly compelling future. All other investment options boast all four of those attributes.
Still, nobody knows when the majority of its fans will come to this realization, keeping bitcoin prices propped up for now.
As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.
