Which of the famous billionaires invests in cryptocurrencies, and why Warren Buffett can be wrong when he calls Bitcoin "rat poison".
Famous billionaires often express their negative opinion about bitcoin and the crypto industry in general. The toughest in this regard is Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway partner Charles Munger. So, in one of the CNBC broadcasts, Buffett called bitcoin "rat poison in the square," and Munger added that "investing in bitcoin is as bad as trading in freshly harvested children's brains." However, there are other opinions: many of Buffett and Munger's colleagues on the Forbes list have already managed to adapt to the rapidly developing crypto market, have begun to invest in it and even make money.
- For example, George Soros acquired a stake in the online retailer Overstock.com, which was one of the first to accept cryptocurrencies since August last year. And Adam Fisher, a macro investor at George Soros' family firm, Soros Fund Management, also received internal approval to launch cryptocurrency transactions. And this is not the only financier from the American Forbes list who was not afraid to touch cryptocurrencies. So, Stephen Cohen, founder of Point72 Asset Management, invested in a hedge fund that works with cryptocurrencies. An even warmer attitude towards cryptocurrencies from the founder PayPal Peter Thiel. Back in 2015, he announced that Bitcoin would change the world. And these were not empty words: since mid-2017, the billionaire's venture capital fund Founders Fund has been actively buying bitcoins. The bitcoins acquired by Founders Fund are estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, although initially it was about investments in the amount of $ 15 million to $ 20 million. In addition to direct investments in bitcoin, Founders Fund also acquired stakes in two cryptocurrency hedge funds: MetaStable Capital and Polychain Capital. And the most interesting: the organization of Peter Thiel Seasteading Institute is involved in the creation of a cryptocurrency "floating island" in the Pacific Ocean, where the internal digital currency Vayron will be.
- Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's venture capital firm TomorrowVentures is the managing partner of TomorrowBC. She has partnered with startup Block.one to create a fund to exclusively invest in the potential of using EOS.IO software. “The opportunities created by these new technologies are truly monumental. It will be extremely interesting to see where the pioneers of these new technologies will lead us, ”said Eric Schmidt. And co-founder of Google and president of Alphabet Sergey Brin, together with his son, mines Ethereum.
- Sir Richard Branson stated in 2013 that "Virgin Galactic is long overdue to accept Bitcoin as payment for flights." In June 2017, the billionaire took part in the closing of the Series B funding round of Blockchain, the operator of the popular Bitcoin wallet Blockchain, during which it raised $ 40 million. Branson is now holding his own blockchain conferences. By the way, it was at the last one in Marrakesh that Sergey Brin admitted that he and his son were mining Ethereum.
- Of course, many billionaires, such as Alibaba founder Jack Ma, are skeptical about cryptocurrencies, but more supportive of the blockchain. Russian billionaires are even more positive about cryptocurrencies than their foreign counterparts. So, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, considers bitcoins to be "digital gold". Durov invested $ 1,5 million in the first cryptocurrency about four years ago. Then he purchased 2000 bitcoins at $ 750 per unit. Only the lazy has not heard about his ICO project TON. But there are also more "first-hand" Russian billionaires who have turned their attention to crypto projects. Alexander Frolov F 44, partner of Roman Abramovich F 11 in Evraz, is one of the founders of the Target Global fund, which manages over $ 500 million and plans to invest in cryptocurrencies. In 2016, Target Global, together with the A&NN fund of Alexander Mamut F 42, invested $ 100 million in a blockchain platform for non-bank lending Blackmoon Financial Group, which was founded by former vice president of VKontakte Ilya Perekopsky and his partners.
- The founder of Technonikol, Igor Rybakov F 84, also invested in Blackmoon Crypto and has been investing in digital currencies with his partner Oscar Hartmann for six months. Billionaire Roman Trotsenko F 60, owner of the Federation Tower in Moscow, said that he was working on creating his own crypto exchange. Yuri Milner F 31 back in 2014 invested in the American crypto bank Xapo, which developed a secure storage and means for paying with bitcoins. Together with him, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, co-founder of Yahoo! Jerry Yang and Emergence Capital Partners. Oleg Deripaska F 19 makes money on cryptocurrencies in a less standard way: he sells electricity to miners.
And these are far from all cases of investment in cryptocurrencies by billionaires. Skeptics, of course, often draw an analogy between the cryptocurrency boom and the dot-com bubble, but they forget to mention that Amazon, Oracle and Ebay are also part of the wave of the first Internet companies. Even they admit they were wrong about these companies. For example, Warren Buffett admitted he was wrong about Google and Amazon. Maybe the day will come very soon when he will say the same to his shareholders and about cryptocurrencies?