Wall Street magnate and guru Warren Buffett joined critical voices against cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and anticipated that at some point "they will have a bad end".
Buffett, president of the Berkshire Hathaway investment firm and one of the richest men in the world, is a highly respected figure in the country and his opinions often leave their mark on financial markets.
In an interview with the financial channel CNBC, Buffett, 87, said that in his portfolio he had no position in bitcoins, which since December has been trading in the futures market in the United States.
"I already have enough problems with the things I know something about, why should I take a long or short term position of something I do not know about?" Buffett asked.
"In terms of cryptocurrencies," he added, "I can usually say with almost total certainty that they will have a bad end."
Buffett, however, can not bet on when that may happen or why, but he made it clear that he will never place a short-term investment in cryptocurrencies.
The founder of Berkshire Hathaway clarified, however, that if there was a futures market with a term of five years, he could think about the possibility of participating in it, but "not a penny" in the short term.
CME, the most important financial derivatives market in the world, based in Chicago, has been offering bitcoin futures since December 18, for a period of one month, two, three and six months.
The American tycoon and his team have been making clear their few sympathies about the bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are gaining more attention every day, which results in an increase in their value.
In a talk he gave several weeks ago, Buffett's deputy, Charlie Munger, described as "total madness" the possibility of thinking about an investment in bitcoins.
"I think it's absolutely stupid to even stop and think about it," Munger said. It is "a crazy bubble, a bad idea, that attracts people to the concept of easy wealth without understanding how it works".
Buffett spoke on the subject a day after Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of the US banking group, JPMorgan Chase, reverted to the bitcoin, although to correct previous positions.
In terms of cryptocurrencies, I can usually say with almost complete certainty that they will have a bad end
Dimon admitted on Tuesday that it had been a mistake to assure last September that the bitcoin is a "fraud", a position that was repeated on numerous occasions in the financial circles of the United States.
"I'm sorry I made that comment," admitted Dimon. The top executive of JPMorgan Chase acknowledged that the "blockchain" technology of cryptocurrencies is "real", but insisted that it is an issue that does not interest him "at all".
The "blockchain" technology, on which cryptocurrencies or digital currencies are based, makes it possible to manage information securely with a distributed, decentralized and synchronized registry.
Although the bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency, with a current capitalization of almost 250,000 million dollars and a value of about 14,000 dollars for each bitcoin, there are about 1,400 cryptocurrencies, according to the Coinmarketcap site.
Only seven of them have a capitalization of more than 10 billion dollars, and the club was joined in the last few hours by Kodak, which announced its own cryptocurrency, KodakCoin, also based on blockchain technology.
Kodak wants to use that platform to manage the property rights of photographers around the world, and believes that the KodakCoin can solve many problems photographers face to collect those rights.
As a result of that announcement, Kodak, a firm with more than a century of life that does not usually appear in the US stock market analysis, closed on Thursday with a rise in its shares of 119%, and close to the half session today. Another 60% advanced.