Warren Buffett: Crypto’s Most Famous Critic, and Why His Own Company Quietly Invested Anyway

In 2018, Warren Buffett stood before Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders and called Bitcoin “probably rat poison squared.” His longtime business partner, the late Charlie Munger, was characteristically blunter, comparing crypto trading to “dementia” and describing it as people “trading turds.”

Seven years later, in early 2025, financial filings revealed that Berkshire Hathaway had invested over $1 billion in Nu Holdings — a Brazilian digital bank whose platform, Nubank Cripto, lets customers trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Berkshire fully exited the position by early 2025, booking an estimated $250 million profit along the way. The world’s most famous crypto skeptic’s own company had, in a real sense, taken a sip of the rat poison he swore he would never touch.

This is the story of Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors in history, and the consistent, decades-long scepticism toward crypto that has made him a defining counterpoint in nearly every debate about Bitcoin’s legitimacy.

Warren Buffett: Quick Overview

Category	Detail
Net worth (Dec 2025, Bloomberg)	~$152 billion
Born	August 30, 1930, Omaha, Nebraska
Role at Berkshire Hathaway	CEO, 1965–Dec 31, 2025; Chairman (continuing)
Successor as CEO	Greg Abel, effective January 1, 2026
Most famous Bitcoin quote	“Probably rat poison squared” (2018)
Berkshire’s crypto exposure	Indirect, via Nu Holdings (Nubank) stake, 2021–2025
Investment philosophy	Long-term value investing; advocate of low-cost index funds for most individual investors

From a Childhood Paper Route to Wall Street Legend

Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children of Congressman Howard Buffett and Leila Stahl Buffett. He displayed an early, genuine fascination with business and investing — selling chewing gum, Coca-Cola bottles, and magazines door-to-door as a child, and purchasing his first stock, three shares of Cities Service Preferred, at age 11.

At 15, Buffett earned more than $175 a month delivering newspapers, and by the time he finished college, he had accumulated $9,800 in savings — a substantial sum for a young man in the early 1950s, reflecting an unusually disciplined, business-minded temperament from a remarkably early age.

He worked as an investment salesman at Buffett-Falk & Co. from 1951 to 1954, before joining Benjamin Graham’s partnership as a securities analyst — an experience that shaped his foundational value-investing philosophy. In 1956, after Graham closed his partnership, Buffett founded his own investment vehicle, Buffett Partnership Ltd.

Building Berkshire Hathaway

Through his partnerships, Buffett became a millionaire by 1962. He subsequently invested in and gradually took control of Berkshire Hathaway, originally a textile manufacturing company — a deal he later described as one of his worst trades, given the textile business’s eventual decline. He pivoted the company’s focus toward insurance and, over subsequent decades, built it into one of the largest and most diversified holding companies in the world, with major stakes in companies including Coca-Cola, American Express, Apple, and numerous insurance and industrial businesses.

Buffett became a billionaire when Berkshire began selling Class A shares in May 1990 at $7,175 per share. He went on to become, at various points, the wealthiest person in the world, and remained one of the most closely watched investors globally for the rest of his career.

Decades of Public Crypto Scepticism

This is the chapter of Buffett’s career most directly relevant to anyone in the crypto space, and one that has made him a consistent reference point — for both critics and defenders of the asset class — for over a decade.

At Berkshire Hathaway’s 2018 annual shareholder meeting, Buffett described Bitcoin as “probably rat poison squared,” telling CNBC separately that “in terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending.” He added a now-frequently quoted line: “We don’t own any cryptocurrency, we don’t short any cryptocurrency, we will never own it.” Munger, never one to soften a position, added: “I like cryptocurrencies a lot less than you do. To me, it’s just dementia.” Read our is Bitcoin a bubble analysis for a more detailed look at this exact line of argument.

At the 2022 shareholder meeting, Buffett extended the critique with a now-famous hypothetical: “If you told me you own all of 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? I’d have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.” His core objection has remained consistent across the years: Bitcoin, in his view, generates no income, produces nothing, and has no intrinsic productive value — unlike a farm, a business, or a share of a productive company, each of which generates ongoing output. Read our what is Bitcoin guide for a complete, neutral explanation of the asset Buffett has so consistently dismissed.

In November 2024, Buffett also became the subject of an AI-generated deepfake video circulating on social media, falsely depicting him promoting a Bitcoin investment website — a scam that both Berkshire Hathaway and Fox News confirmed was synthetic and unauthorised, an ironic footnote given his consistent public criticism of the underlying asset the fake video promoted.

The Nubank Contradiction: Did Berkshire Quietly Invest in Crypto Anyway?

This is the detail that complicates Buffett’s otherwise consistent anti-crypto narrative, and one worth examining honestly rather than glossing over.

In 2021, Berkshire Hathaway invested $500 million in a Series G funding round for Nu Holdings, the parent company of Nubank, a Brazilian digital banking platform — followed by an additional $250 million investment, bringing Berkshire’s total Nubank-related investment to approximately $750 million to $1 billion depending on the specific reporting. Nubank itself was not a crypto company at the time of Berkshire’s initial investment.

In 2022, however, Nubank launched Nubank Cripto, a cryptocurrency trading platform supporting Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polygon directly within its banking app — meaning Berkshire’s investment, originally made in a traditional digital bank, became indirectly exposed to a company actively facilitating crypto trading for millions of customers. By November 2024, Nubank had further expanded this functionality, introducing a Bitcoin-to-USDC swap feature allowing direct exchange between Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Uniswap into the stablecoin USDC. Read our USDT vs USDC guide for background on the stablecoin this feature relied on.

Berkshire began divesting its Nu Holdings stake in Q3 2024 and completed a full exit by Q1 2025, reportedly gaining approximately $250 million from the divestment. Whether this exit reflected a deliberate move away from crypto-adjacent exposure, simple portfolio rebalancing, or coincidental timing has not been definitively confirmed by Berkshire. What is clear is that, for several years, the company most associated with anti-crypto rhetoric held a meaningful indirect financial stake in a platform actively enabling crypto trading — a genuine, documented contradiction worth holding alongside Buffett’s public statements rather than ignoring.

Stepping Down: The End of the Buffett Era at Berkshire

In May 2025, Buffett announced he would step down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO, with Greg Abel — then Vice Chairman of Berkshire’s non-insurance operations and Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy — taking over as CEO effective January 1, 2026. Buffett has remained Chairman of the Board, continuing in an active but reduced operational role after nearly six decades running the company.

This transition has prompted genuine speculation within crypto and financial media about whether Berkshire’s institutional stance on digital assets might eventually shift under Abel’s leadership. As of early 2026, Abel has made no public statements regarding Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, and industry analysts broadly expect continuity with Buffett’s scepticism in the near term, given Abel’s close working relationship with both Buffett and Munger throughout his career at the company. One analyst noted that Abel is likely to “initially avoid doing anything that could look like a marked shift away from Buffett’s and Munger’s values, even if he actually disagrees” — suggesting any potential change in Berkshire’s posture toward crypto, if it comes, is likely to be gradual rather than an immediate reversal.

Buffett’s Broader Investment Philosophy

Independent of his crypto views, Buffett has been one of the most influential advocates for low-cost index fund investing for ordinary individual investors, arguing that most people lack the time, expertise, or temperament to consistently beat the market through active stock-picking. Read our what is a crypto index fund guide for how this same passive-investing principle has been applied within crypto specifically. He has consistently recommended broad, diversified index funds as the most sensible approach for the average investor — a philosophy entirely consistent with his scepticism toward speculative assets like Bitcoin, which he views as offering no underlying productive value to anchor a long-term investment thesis.

As of late 2024, Berkshire Hathaway held more than $325 billion in cash and equivalents, predominantly in US Treasury bills — reflecting the company’s deliberately conservative posture even during periods of strong broader market performance, a strategy one industry analyst summarised as Berkshire having “succeeded over the decades by being boring.”

Net Worth and Philanthropy

As of December 2025, Bloomberg estimated Buffett’s net worth at approximately $152 billion, ranking him among the ten wealthiest individuals globally. In 2006, Buffett announced he would gradually give away 85% of his Berkshire holdings to five foundations, with the largest share directed to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — one of the largest philanthropic commitments in history at the time of its announcement, and one he has continued to honour through systematic annual donations in the years since.

FAQs

Does Warren Buffett own any cryptocurrency?

No, not directly. Buffett has stated explicitly and repeatedly that Berkshire Hathaway has never owned, and will never own, Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies directly. However, Berkshire did hold an indirect stake in Nu Holdings, a Brazilian digital bank that later launched crypto trading features, from 2021 until fully exiting the position by Q1 2025.

What did Warren Buffett call Bitcoin?

He famously called it “probably rat poison squared” at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2018 annual shareholder meeting, a description he has reiterated in spirit across subsequent years, including stating in 2022 that he would not accept all the world’s Bitcoin even for free, since it “isn’t going to do anything.”

Is Warren Buffett still CEO of Berkshire Hathaway?

No. He stepped down as CEO effective January 1, 2026, with Greg Abel taking over the role. Buffett continues to serve as Chairman of the Board.

What is Warren Buffett’s net worth in 2026?

As of December 2025, Bloomberg estimated his net worth at approximately $152 billion, making him one of the ten wealthiest people in the world.

Why did Berkshire Hathaway invest in a company with crypto features if Buffett dislikes Bitcoin?

Berkshire’s investment in Nu Holdings was originally made in 2021 in a traditional digital banking company. Nubank only launched its cryptocurrency trading platform, Nubank Cripto, in 2022, after Berkshire’s initial investment. Berkshire fully exited its Nu Holdings position by Q1 2025, though the company has not explicitly stated whether the crypto features influenced that decision.

Will Berkshire Hathaway change its stance on crypto under Greg Abel?

As of early 2026, Abel has made no public statements on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Industry analysts generally expect continuity with Buffett’s longstanding scepticism in the near term, though some speculate Abel could eventually take a different approach given his lack of any publicly stated personal view on the matter.

Final Word

Warren Buffett’s relationship with crypto is, in one sense, the simplest story in this entire industry: one of history’s most successful investors has consistently, publicly, and colourfully rejected Bitcoin’s value proposition for nearly a decade, never wavering from his core argument that an asset producing no income or output cannot be reasonably valued the way a productive business or farm can.

In another sense, his story is genuinely more complicated than the “rat poison” soundbite suggests — Berkshire’s multi-year, billion-dollar-plus indirect exposure to a crypto-enabled platform complicates any simple narrative of total, uncompromising rejection. Read our is crypto better than stocks guide for a balanced look at the exact comparison Buffett’s criticism implicitly raises. As Buffett hands day-to-day leadership to Greg Abel after six decades at Berkshire’s helm, his consistent scepticism remains one of the most frequently cited counterarguments in any serious discussion of Bitcoin’s legitimacy — a position that has not changed regardless of Bitcoin’s price, adoption, or institutional acceptance over the years since he first called it rat poison.

Disclaimer: Net worth figures are estimates based on publicly available sources, primarily Bloomberg. This article presents Warren Buffett’s documented views on cryptocurrency for informational purposes; it does not constitute financial advice, and does not reflect the views of CryptoEmotions on the merits of any cryptocurrency investment.