Warren Buffett is an insider in the current system and as such benefits from cheap credit, bailouts, insider information and all the trappings of a system which is controlled by fallible and corruptible human beings. If Buffett truly understood Bitcoin he would correctly perceive it to be a threat to exactly the kind of disproportionate influence that someone like him enjoys.

Coincidentally, this is precisely why the Chinese have taken a hard line against Bitcoin, because it empowers individuals by granting them freedom in the economic domain. In that light, Buffett’s overly defensive and outright hostile attitude towards this emerging technology, that promises to democratize influence and access to the financial system, is not at all surprising. Furthermore, his implicit praise of the Chinese Communist Party and pointing to them as a model which we should follow by rejecting Bitcoin is concerning in its own right.

In summary, Warren Buffett’s assessment that bitcoin is worthless would be laughable except for the fact that someone like him likely knows better or at least should know better. The degree to which his comments discourage people from seriously considering bitcoin could prove harmful to those who take them seriously. Let the irony not be lost on the fact that Buffett frames Bitcoin as “rat poison” and “contrary to the interest of civilization” while famously making much of his fortune in Coca-Cola, a company which peddles sugar water which contributes mightily to poor health worldwide and more specifically to the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in the U.S. Considering all of the above, it would be wise to couch the pontifications of the Oracle of Omaha in a high degree of skepticism.