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Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” could have more direct and indirect exposure to cryptocurrency than he knows, based on the latest move by one of his major investments.
Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company for a multitude of businesses owned by Buffett, invested $500 million in Nubank in June 2021 by leading the extension of a Series G funding round. When the bank went public in December of the same year, its valuation reached $41.5 billion. Buffett’s holding company reportedly acquired 30 million shares for a total of $250 million.
Interestingly, Berkshire Hathaway dumped 1.27 million shares of Visa and 302,000 shares of Mastercard earlier this year. The holding company sold them for $3.1 billion and purchased $1 billion worth of stocks, increasing its exposure in Nubank.
It is worth noting that while Nubank does not engage in cryptocurrency trading, NuInvest, its investment unit, allows its users to invest in cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETF).
Buffett has more than $1 billion in investment in Nu Holdings, which means he could be exposed to the growth of the crypto market directly or indirectly. But this was in 2021 and early 2022.
Recently, however, Nu Bank, a unit of Nu Holdings, announced its own crypto through a partnership with Polygon, the technology platform that connects and grows Ethereum-compatible projects and blockchains.
With the intent to boost rewards and loyalty to customers, Nu Bank will launch the crypto in the first quarter of 2023. This will reportedly be a new “groundbreaking rewards program” that will be delivered free to customers.
“We are opening a door to the future. Nucoin is a new way to recognize customer loyalty and foster further engagement with Nubank products,” Fernando Czapski, Nu Coin general manager, said.
“The project is another step ahead in our belief in the transformative potential of blockchain technology and to democratize it, even more, going beyond the purchase, sale and maintenance of cryptocurrencies in the Nu app,” Czapski added.
Moreover, Nu Holdings said in May that it would launch crypto trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum and would add BTC to its balance sheet.
If Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a vocal advocate of cryptocurrency and even calls himself the “DogeFather” because of his support of the dog-themed altcoin Dogecoin, Buffett is the exact opposite. In fact, the latter was described by Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, as the “enemy No. 1” of Bitcoin. Buffett also said in the past that he would not purchase Bitcoin even if its price nosedived to $25. He was also quoted as saying that Bitcoin is “rat poison squared.”
However, with his investment in Nu Holdings, he could be getting exposed to crypto more than he knows, and each time he criticizes cryptocurrencies, he could also be throwing negative remarks at one of his investments’ growth areas.
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