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(Kitco News) – At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting earlier this month, Warren Buffet, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, bashed Bitcoin once again.
“If you told me you owned all the Bitcoin in the world, and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it, because what would I do with it,” Buffet said at the meeting. “I would have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.”
Jordan Fried, CEO of Immutable Holdings, explained why he disagrees with Buffet on Bitcoin. “Despite the cryptocurrency community attempting to educate people on Bitcoin for the last five years, some of the most sophisticated investors in the world, Buffet and Charlie Munger, still call Bitcoin ‘rat poison,’ emphasized Fried. “I think these guys should stay in their lanes and talk about the things that they are really good at, which is value investing.”
Fried spoke to David Lin, Anchor at Kitco News, about Bitcoin and the NFT (non-fungible token) markets. Immutable Holdings is the first ever portfolio of Breakout Blockchain businesses. It has more than $100 million in assets under management. Fried is also the Founder of NFT.com, and he just launched it publicly.
Fried continued to speak about Buffet’s recent remarks about Bitcoin, while explaining how blockchain works. “The statement Buffet made in and of itself shows how ignorant he is to how a blockchain works. A blockchain is a decentralized network of computers, where computers are compensated proportionate to the CPU, bandwidth and storage they contribute to the network. It is a productive commodity,” he said.
Discussing why Fried believes the two legendary investors are making these negative comments about Bitcoin, Fried stressed, “While I have learned a lot from all their books and their mentor, Benjamin Graham, I don’t think they understand the technology. Bitcoin is just software, and blockchain is just software that we can use to solve these problems. That’s where Ethereum comes in. Ethereum is the gas for a general application network and the smartest investors understand that.”
“A blockchain network is productive to the extent that it incentivizes people. For the first time in human history, we have two or three dozen multi-billion-dollar companies dedicated to creating better microprocessors and better computer chips to solve complex mathematical problems, to add blocks to a blockchain,” Fried continued.
A common perception is that a lot of old school investors prefer to invest in businesses that generate cash flow rather than Bitcoin, because it’s difficult to measure the cashflow Bitcoin produces. But Fried believes the opposite is true.
“Where you look at the rails of the network, this is the first time in human history that you can send me money while I’m in Puerto Rico and you’re in Canada,” Fried pointed out. “We don’t have to go through a traditional bank. We don’t have to go through PayPal, Venmo, Cash App or WePay, or any of these other centralized payment applications.”
“Bitcoin came in handy when the Ukrainian government did not want to have to rely on the Red Cross or traditional finance to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from around the world,” Fried explained. “Donations were made directly to the Ukrainian government to their cryptocurrency wallets in all different kinds of cryptos, Fried said.”
Speaking about the NFT space, Fried noted that recently the price of NFTs has dropped in value.
“When you look at the growth trajectory of NFTs, it is very, very early for NFTs. If you look at how we are using NFTs today, it’s not how we are going to be using them in five to ten years.”
“Looking at the entire world of NFTs, we are living in a bubble. You may have read or heard about NFTs, but the truth is almost no one in the world has ever bought an NFT. The actual data, if you look at the blockchain, there is under 6 million people in the world as of May, 2022 who have purchased Bitcoins,” Fried noted. “That number is growing by about 6 to 8,000 new wallets connecting to an NFT project, but that is a very small number.”
Fried indicated that he still has a $1 million price target for Bitcoin. “A million dollars is not a million dollars anymore. A billion dollars is not a billion dollars anymore. If you look at just what assets cost, the Consumer Price Index is off the charts,” Fried said. “We may see a million-dollar Bitcoin just because there’s been a ridiculous amount of government money printing in the last couple of years. The Fed is trying some pretty aggressive tactics to reign that money printing in, but I don’t think the Fed will ultimately be successful.”
For more on Jordan Fried’s views on Bitcoin and the NFT markets, please watch the full video above.
Follow David Lin on Twitter: @davidlin_TV
Follow Kitco News on Twitter: @KitcoNewsNOW
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