My Offer To Charlie Munger: A $1 Million Wager That Bitcoin Will Outperform Berkshire Hathaway
Below is a letter I sent by certified mail to Charlie Munger later today:
___________________________________
February 25, 2021
Dear Mr. Munger,
Thank you for the tremendous wealth ($575+ billion) that you and Warren Buffet have generated for countless people via Berkshire Hathaway. And thank you for your gifts to the University of Michigan and countless other educational institutions. You’re an icon of the investment world and of giving back.
That said, I’d like to address your recent comments regarding bitcoin:
During an interview at the Daily Journal’s annual shareholder’s meeting, Munger was asked whether he thought it was crazier for bitcoin to hit $50,000 or for Tesla to reach a $1 trillion fully diluted enterprise value, he said: “Well I have the same difficulty that Samuel Johnson once had when he got a similar question, he said, ‘I can’t decide the order of precedency between a flea and a louse,’ and I feel the same way about those choices. I don’t know which is worse.” — CNBC, February 24, 2021
I would simply comment using one of your quotes:
“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”
I appreciate it’s difficult to understand bitcoin. I’m a former Goldman Sachs equity analyst who started trying to understand Bitcoin in June, 2013. But it wasn’t until four years later, on June 29 2017, that I saw the crypto light. I was fortunate enough to be able to stop everything I was doing, and focus 100% of my time on crypto, including writing over 200 crypto related blog posts to better understand this dense enigma. In May of 2018, I published “The Top 10 Reasons People Can’t See The Crypto Light”, which included the following:
3. Some People Are Too Successful To See The Light
In order to see the Crypto light, you have to be open to new ideas. You have to want to look to the right or left, even if looking straight ahead has paid off big time. Yet the more successful that people are, the less likely they are to change how they look at the world. The less likely they are to have an interest in looking left or right and seeing what’s there. Being successful makes it less likely you’ll see the Crypto light.
So getting back to your own words, I’m disappointed that a man of your stature would choose to disparage an asset that I’m confident you don’t have any real knowledge of. Particularly when bitcoin, like Berkshire Hathaway, has created so much wealth for so many people. And I believe that bitcoin will create significantly more wealth in the years to come (See “How High Can Bitcoin Go”, January 3, 2021).
So I encourage you, like I encourage everyone, to take the time to learn about crypto. To learn about bitcoin. To learn about decentralization and how profoundly it can make the world a better place for billions of people. I warn you that it takes time. It takes a lot of time. It’s the deepest rabbit hole I’ve ever ventured down. But the return-on investment on that time spent will be remarkable. I appreciate that I may be wrong about bitcoin. But at least I’d be wrong about something I’ve tried deeply to understand. At least I’m not “…..confidently answering questions about which I don’t have any real knowledge.”
So in the spirit of your educational philanthropy, my company, BIGtoken, would like to wager you $1 million, that Bitcoin will outperform Berkshire Hathaway over the next three years. If bitcoin outperforms, we’ll take our $1 million winnings and give it to organizations that educate people about crypto (e.g. Crypto Blockchain Plug in Inglewood and The Blockchain Center in Miami) . Because crypto education is truly one of the greatest gifts we can give another person. Should you win, you’d be free to take your winnings and spread it across the the educational institutions of your choosing.
Thank you for considering this offer. We can document it all on the blockchain.
Sincerely,
Lou Kerner
CEO, BIGtoken
Please clap below (up to 50 times) so Charlie sees it!
