28-Year-Old Entrepreneur Spends $4.6 MILLION To Have Lunch With Warren Buffett
Source - This year’s charity steak lunch with the legendary investor Warren Buffett will probably be all about blockchain and crypto.
Justin Sun, the 28-year-old founder of blockchain platform TRON and CEO of peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent, won the annual eBay charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett at steakhouse Smith & Wollensky in New York City. Sun, who calls himself a disciple of Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma, paid $4.6 million for the opportunity to dine with Buffett. Sun can also bring up to seven friends.
“I’m a long-term believer (and certainly a big fan) of Buffett and his long-term value investing strategy. As some of you might know, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has said publicly he sees no ‘unique value’ in Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Yet, he has pointed to the potential in blockchain, the underlying technology behind all cryptocurrency,” Sun wrote in a post on Monday. “I look at the upcoming lunch with Buffett as an opportunity to seek mutual understanding and growth.”
Sun made the first pot of gold by investing in Tesla and bitcoin when he was studying at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, according to Chinese media reports. Following the press release, Sun plans to invite several “industry leaders” in the cryptocurrency and blockchain community to join the lunch with Buffett.
You know what the best part of this story is? That Warren Buffett probably hates this guy’s guts. The man can’t bring himself to spend more than $2 per day on breakfast and he has to sit down with a guy who just dropped $4.6 MILLION on a lunch. He’s built his entire empire through investing (well) and not spending a dime no matter how much money he had in the bank. This competition goes against everything he stands for financially (except charity). He lives in the same house he bought for $31,500 back in 1958 despite having a net worth of $81.6 billion. Think about how committed to your principles you have to be to do that.
On top of it all, Buffett hates bitcoin, which is how Justin Sun made his money in the first place.
Buffett and his longtime business partner Charlie Munger have been known for their distaste for cryptocurrency. To Buffett, bitcoin is not an investment, but “a gambling device”. Munger once joked “bitcoin investors celebrate the life and work of Judas Iscariot” at happy hour.
However, Buffett holds a more open attitude toward blockchain, the underlying technology in cryptocurrencies which is increasingly being adopted by major companies in finance, logistics, and tech, including JPMorgan Chase and Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway’s partners in a health care venture.
“We probably are doing it indirectly through a bank,” Buffett said of blockchain in May. “But no, I wouldn’t be the person to be a big leader in blockchain.”
He’s essentially sitting down for a meal with his enemy: a young guy who was in the right place at the right time and made a shit ton of money off an unproven technology.
Meanwhile Buffett’s made his money off old school institutions like these:
- GEICO
- Dairy Queen
- Duracell
- Benjamin Moore
- NetJets
- See’s Candies
- Fruit of the Loom
All of which he owns.
Having said that, the $4.6 million that Sun spent on the lunch is going to the Glide Foundation, a charity that fights to combat homelessness in San Francisco, so it’s for a good cause. He also seems to be masking his hatred pretty well, which will bode well for Justin.
In an emailed statement to Yahoo Finance, Buffett says he’s delighted with Justin’s win and looks forward to meeting him and his friends. “We are going to have a good time and Glide will use his contribution to help many thousands of people,” Buffett said.
Hopefully he gets whatever advice it is he was looking for.