Warren Buffett, who called crypto rat poison, invests $1 billion in crypto-friendly bank

File image of Warren Buffett

Rat poison, venereal disease, unproductive asset, contrary to the interests of civilization and more—the name-calling has been on for a while.

Legendary investors and Berkshire Hathaway bosses Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have minced no words in venting their contempt for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But do they mean it?

No. The latest Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by Berkshire Hathaway has revealed the company’s interest and investments in the crypto space, contrary to the constant hostile public stance taken by its founders, Fortune magazine said on its website on February 16.

Berkshire Hathaway recently purchased shares worth about $1 billion in NuBank, a digital, Brazil-based neobank, one of the largest digital financial services providers in Latin America, the report said.

While the bank does not allow cryptocurrency trading, its investment unit namely NuInvest facilitates users to invest their money in various cryptocurrencies and bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF).

Berkshire’s chairman and CEO Buffett has famously in the past described cryptocurrency as rat poison and an unproductive asset that “has no unique value at all”.

His longtime partner and Berkshire vice chairman Munger as recently as this week said he wished cryptocurrency had never been invented and also described digital currency as beneath contempt.

And this is not the first time that the crypto-system has seen investments from Hathaway. In 2021, the company bought a $500-million stake in the bank, months before NuBank went public in December.

Hathaway, on the other hand, has been constantly bringing down its investments in other traditional financial assets and institutions.

The SEC filing also went on to reveal that the company had let go of around $3 billion worth of shares in digital payment giants Visa and Mastercard.

The fourth quarter of 2021 also saw Berkshire selling about 1.27 million shares of Visa and around 3,02,000 shares of Mastercard.

“There is so much opportunity in the [Latin America] region. The combination of a great population, horrible customer experiences, and very high fees, is unmatched. Worldwide there is no place that is better suited in terms of having a great opportunity for fintech companies to tackle", said Nubank co-founder Cristina Junqueira told Fortune.

Notably, Latin America, home to a large section of the population whose financial needs are not adequately met by traditional banks and financial institutions, proffers an immense, vast, and untapped consumer market to many digital financial service providers like NuBank.