Charlie Munger: 'Of course, I hate the bitcoin success'

Legendary investor Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B, BRK-A), and his long-time business partner Charlie Munger dissed bitcoin once more at the annual meeting of shareholders on Saturday.

"I knew there’d be a question on bitcoin," Buffett said. "I thought to myself, 'Well, I’ve watched these politicians dodge questions all the time, you know, I find it kind of disgusting, but they do it.' But the truth is I'm gonna dodge that question because we probably got hundreds of thousands of people watching that own bitcoin, and we probably have two people that are short. So we got a choice of making 400,000 people mad at us and unhappy, and, or making two people happy, and that's just a dumb equation."

Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, said bringing up bitcoin is like "waving the red flag at the bull."

"Of course, I hate the bitcoin success and I don’t welcome a currency that’s useful to kidnappers and extortionists, and so forth," the 97-year-old said. "Nor do I like just shuffling out of extra billions and billions and billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air. So, I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization. And I'll leave the criticism to others."

To that, Buffett joked, "I'm alright on that one."

Bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) price was trading north of $57,800 at the time of this publication.

Full Coverage of Berkshire Hathaway's 2021 Annual Shareholders Meeting

It's not the first time the pair of billionaire investors have criticized the cryptocurrency. At the 2018 annual meeting, Buffett called bitcoin "probably rat poison-squared," while Munger called it a "turd." At the time, the cryptocurrency was worth around $9,800.

“I think every time you buy a nonproductive asset, you’re counting on somebody else, later on, to buy a nonproductive asset, because they think they can sell to somebody for more money,” Buffett said at the 2018 meeting. “It does come to a bad ending.”

“I think people who are professional traders that are going to trade cryptocurrencies, it’s just disgusting,” Munger added. “It’s like someone else is trading turds and you decide I can’t be left out.”

Julia La Roche is a correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

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