Berkshire Hathaway’s billionaire vice chairman Charlie Munger renewed his scathing criticism of the cryptocurrency sector – calling the industry a “sewer” full of bad actors selling digital coins that lack any actual value.
Munger, one of the financial world’s most vocal critics of cryptocurrencies, referred to the “crypto craze” as a “mass folly” during an interview published on Tuesday.
“I just avoid it as if it were an open sewer, full of malicious organisms,” Munger said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review. “I just totally avoid and recommended everybody else follow my example.”
Munger continued his diatribe in the interview, calling crypto an “investment in nothing” that investors would have to be “almost insane” to consider.
“I think anybody that sells this stuff is either delusional or evil. I won’t touch the crypto,” Munger said. “I’m not interested in undermining the national currencies of the world.”
Munger, the 98-year-old right-hand man to Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, has never held back his disdain for the burgeoning sector.
Earlier this year, Munger likened the digital tokens to a “venereal disease” that he was glad to have avoided.
“I just regard it as beneath contempt,” Munger said. “Some people think it’s modernity and they welcome a currency that’s useful in extortions and kidnappings and so on and so on, tax evasions.”
Munger, who has an estimated personal fortune of $2.2 billion, according to Forbes, has also referred to cryptocurrency as “rat poison” and “contrary to the interests of civilization” in the recent past and asserted that it facilitates criminal activity.
His latest warning came as bitcoin and other tokens plunge to their lowest level in years as investors brace for a possible recession.
Bitcoin fell nearly 3% to $19,734 as of Tuesday morning and is down more than 70% from its all-time high of $69,000 last November. The downward spiral has prompted a wave of layoffs among prominent cryptocurrency firms and fears of a liquidity crisis in the industry.
A recent survey found that 60% of investors expect bitcoin to sink to $10,000 in the days ahead, compared to 40% who project a rebound to $30,000.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
