Bill Miller, the billionaire founder and chief investment officer of the firm Miller Value Partners, has said that he considers bitcoin (BTC) an “insurance policy against financial catastrophe.”.
In an episode of the “Richer, Wiser, Happier” podcast on May 24, Miller endorsed cryptocurrency as a means for people caught up in conflict to continue to access financial products.. He used the collapse of the financial infrastructure in Afghanistan following the US withdrawal in August 2021 as an example.
“When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, Western Union stopped sending remittances there or accepting them from Afghanistan, but if you had bitcoin, you were fine. Your bitcoin is there. You can send it to anyone in the world if you have a phone.”
Miller said that examples of how cryptocurrency can function as insurance don’t “have to be all or nothing.”noting how bitcoin behaved during the early stages of the pandemic and the Fed’s reaction:
“When the Federal Reserve stepped in and started to skyrocket the money supply and essentially bail out mortgage rates […] bitcoin worked fine. There was no bitcoin bull run. The system worked without the Fed and without any interference. Everybody got their bitcoin, the price adjusted, and then when Bitcoiners realized, ‘Wait, we’ll have inflation on the way,’ bitcoin went through the roof.”
“It’s an insurance policy, the way I see it,” he added.
Miller also rebutted Warren Buffett’s recent criticism of bitcoin, in which the billionaire investor commented that he “doesn’t produce anything” and “wouldn’t accept” all the bitcoin in the world even for $25.:
“He said that bitcoin is a non-performing asset and therefore you can’t value it. Fair enough. If the only thing you think you can value is productive assets, then no one is forcing you to buy it, right? So ignore him.”
Later, he followed up his comment, adding that “the goal of investing is not to own productive assets, the goal is to make money.”.
Miller is famous for managing a portfolio that for 15 consecutive years, between 1991 and 2005, consistently outperformed the S&P 500 Index.. He is also known for his defense of bitcoin, putting half of his assets into the asset in January.
CWhen asked if he still held that position, Miller confirmed that “40% to 50%” of his money was in Amazon stock and that his bitcoin holdings were “about the same as Amazon.”adding that 80% of his net worth is divided between both assets.
Miller also talked about the tattoo based on Terra (LUNA) on Mike Novogratz’s armthe founder of crypto asset management firm Galaxy Digital, after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem:
“Someone had sent me a picture of Mike Novogratz getting a LUNA tattoo on his arm months ago, of the wolf howling at the moon, and it’s big. It’s like, whoops, maybe you should have gotten a bitcoin on your arm, it would be a little more durable than that.”
Novogratz has said the tattoo will be a “constant reminder that venture investing requires humility.”as Galaxy Digital posted a $300 million loss on its investments in LUNA.
“I felt bad for him when I saw a story where he went from something like $10 billion to $2 billion,” Miller said, “it’s really tragic.”.
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