Warren Buffett has made his dislike for Bitcoin known over the years. “In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending,” he said in 2018 . At the time, Bitcoin was priced at about $15,000.
Today, Bitcoin’s value has soared above $50,000. Yet Buffett hasn’t changed his tune. Even if someone offered him all the Bitcoin in the world for $25, Buffett said, he wouldn’t take it. “Because what would I do with it?” he asked. “I’ll have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.”
There’s an exception to every rule. Buffett doesn’t like Bitcoin, but that doesn’t mean his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B), dislikes it.
Berkshire now has a market cap of almost $900 billion, and Buffett has many experienced advisors helping him manage its sprawling portfolio. Either he or one of his advisors, it seems, loves one stock in particular, enough to make a $1 billion bet on it. That stock is heavily exposed to the rise of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin included.
Riding the Bitcoin wave
There’s an old adage during gold rushes: Don’t chase the gold, sell pickaxes — you’re sure to profit whether gold is discovered or not. This is exactly the strategy Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU) is following when it comes to profiting from crypto.
In 2013, Nu took the Latin American banking industry by storm under the name Nubank. The pitch was simple: For too long, the region’s banking industry had been controlled by a handful of powerful players that used their market dominance to charge customers high fees for simple services.
Born as a digital-first bank, Nubank began offering low-cost financial products like bank accounts, credit cards, and personal loans to anyone with a smartphone or computer .
Latin America’s appetite for low-cost and easy-to-use financial products proved overwhelming. In 2014, for example, the bank had almost no customers. That figure has grown every quarter since, surpassing 90 million in 2023 . Amazingly, more than half of Brazil’s adult population are now Nubank…
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