Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is wrong about bitcoin, tech venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya argued on Wednesday.
“Not everybody is right all the time,” the former Facebook executive told CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” adding that knowledge about technology is not in the Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO’s “circle of competence.”
Buffett bashed bitcoin Monday in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, saying the world’s largest cryptocurrency doesn’t produce anything except for more buyers looking to make money by selling to new buyers. Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, a Berkshire board member, slammed bitcoin as well.
Palihapitiya, who called himself a Buffett “disciple,” said that he sees the cryptocurrency as a replacement to gold. “Something like bitcoin is really important,” Palihapitiya said, “because it is not correlated to the rest of the market.”
“I’ve been in the bitcoin market since 2012,” he added. “I feel like I’m in two different universes. I need a passport to go between the bitcoin world and the regular world.”
Palihapitiya said people who have owned the cryptocurrency since 2012 view it as a hedge to the “traditional financial infrastructure.” Whether that’s true or not is “unclear,” he said. “But that’s how we all view it.”
Tech investor Chamath Palihapitiya: I'm a Warren Buffett 'disciple' but he's wrong about bitcoin