[bmcusick]

Bingo. He's also a value investor. He understands cash flows. Bitcoin produces no cash flow.

Also, Buffet is the insider's insider. Banks work for him. He has exactly a 0.00000% chance of having his accounts frozen. The US Congress would hesitate to pick fights with his companies. When you have those kind of connections and power, you're not well placed to understand the benefits decentralized sources of authority provides.

What Buffet is missing is that bitcoin is an alternative to cash, and when lightning networks and side chains are widely deployed it will be very, very competitive with cash on most axes. Eventually (if hyperbitcoinization actually happens) even the variability will be less than any one national currency, since global demand and stabilizers will buffer it against any localized shock.

[jhall1468]

I think he understands it better than you give him credit for. He just doesn't see a future for it. To most investors the promise of Bitcoin is the same promise of snake oil.

Everything about Bitcoin is new and untested and most institutional investors abhor anything they can't quantify. Bitcoin is a huge gamble, and people like Gates and Buffet don't gamble.

[tim333]

Or he doesn't see why it should be valued at a high amount. As he says a check is a handy way to transfer money but isn't saleable for very much in itself.

[solean]

It's been tested for over 10 years with the biggest bug bounty in the world.

[sizzzzlerz]

Not the point. Besides, 10 years of testing still doesn't prove it's secure. Intel and AMD CPUs, manufactured since 1995 have the Meltdown and Spectre flaws that were only discovered recently.

[jhall1468]

Not security testing, I'm talking about testing economically. Decentralized currency has never been tested at scale. It's worked locally for many cultures, but never globally.