Bill Miller, who is known for investing about half of his multi-billion dollar fortune in Bitcoin in January, called BTC an “insurance policy against financial catastrophe.”
Bill Miller, founder and chief investment officer of investment firm Miller Value Partners, said he considers Bitcoin (BTC) to be an “insurance policy against financial catastrophe.” He is known for managing a portfolio that consistently outperformed the S&P 500 index for 15 consecutive years from 1991 to 2005, and for being a Bitcoin advocate.
Appearing on the May 24 episode of the “Richer, Wiser, Happier” podcast, Miller backed the cryptocurrency as a means for those caught in conflict to still access financial products, according to Cointelegraph. As an example, he cited the collapse of the financial infrastructure in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021.
“When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, Western Union stopped sending remittances there or taking them from Afghanistan, but if you had Bitcoin, you were fine. Your bitcoin is there. You can send it to anybody in the world if you have a phone.”
Miller said examples of how the crypto can function as insurance do not “have to be all or nothing.” He pointed to how Bitcoin performed during the early stages of the pandemic, as well as the Fed's reaction to it:
“When the Fed stepped in and started gunning the money supply and bailing out, in essence, the mortgage rates […] Bitcoin functioned fine. There was no run on bitcoin. The system functioned without the Fed and without any interference. Everybody got their Bitcoin, the price adjusted, and then when the Bitcoiners realized, 'Wait, we're going to have inflation down the road,' Bitcoin went through the roof [...] It's an insurance policy, the way I look at it.”
Miller also chided Warren Buffett for his recent criticism of Bitcoin. Buffett and his right-hand man, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, used the company's annual shareholder meeting to ridicule Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies yet again. “Whether [the Bitcoin price] goes up or down in the next year, or five or 10 years, I don't know,” said Buffett, explaining his long dislike of Bitcoin due to it not producing anything tangible—unlike businesses or property. “If you told me you own all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25 I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it? I'd have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn't going to do anything,” he continued.
Miller replied: “He said that Bitcoin is a non-productive asset and therefore he can't value it. Fair enough. If the only thing that you think you can value are productive assets, then no one's making you buy it, right? So ignore it.” He later added that “the objective of investing is not to own productive assets, the objective is to make money.”
Miller also confirmed that roughly 40% to 50% of his money is in Amazon stock and his Bitcoin holdings are “about the same as Amazon,” adding that 80% of his net worth is split between the two assets.
© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.
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About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
