Charlie Munger’s uniquely imaginative vision of Bitcoin (BTC) was given yet a further twist today, as the Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman compared cryptocurrency trading to dealing in “freshly harvested baby brains.” During an interview with Yahoo Finance May 7, Munger was asked if there were anything he could recognize of value in the crypto phenomenon. He replied:
“The computer science behind Bitcoin is a great triumph of the human mind, that’s what’s captivated all these people. They’ve created a product that’s hard to create more of but not impossible … [But] I see an artificial speculative medium … I regard the whole business as anti-social, stupid and immoral.”
When Munger was queried as to exactly what he meant by “immoral,” he offered a lurid illustration:
“Suppose you could make a lot of money trading freshly harvested baby brains. Would you do it, or would you say that’s immoral? You wouldn’t trade them, would you? It’s too awful a concept. Well, to me Bitcoin is almost as bad.”
Munger emphasized his view that cryptocurrencies do not serve “any desirable social purpose,” and that their usefulness as payment systems is undermined by their high volatility and inefficiency as compared with available methods. He concluded, in no uncertain terms:
“I regard the whole thing as a combination of dementia and immorality. I think the people pushing it are a disgrace. There ought to be some things that are beneath you, that you just don’t do, and this is one.”
Munger has previously decried Bitcoin as “totally asinine,” suggesting that people get involved in crypto ”because everybody wants easy money.”
This spring has been a particularly imaginatively fertile season for the vice chairman and his fellow Bitcoin bear and CEO at Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, with the latter claiming that Bitcoin is "probably rat poison squared,” and Munger embellishing the picture with his idea that crypto investments are like “trading turds.” Evidently, nobody wants to be left out, he mused.