Himalaya Capital's Li Lu Calls Crypto ‘Fundamentally Bogus’ and Predicts Its Demise

Li Lu's October 5 Remarks in New York

Li Lu, founder and chairman of Himalaya Capital and one of Charlie Munger's closest intellectual heirs, told a New York value-investing audience that crypto is “fundamentally bogus” and will eventually “disappear on its own.” The exchange took place on October 5 at the 36th Annual Graham & Dodd Luncheon, the gathering named for the authors of Security Analysis, with Columbia Business School professor Tano Santos moderating the fireside chat. An audience member asked about crypto in the context of global financial conditions, and the published transcript records Li Lu's answer. He said he attaches no value to the asset class, expects it to vanish without anyone forcing the issue, and sees no harm in that outcome. Excerpts of the conversation later circulated on social media.

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His argument turned on what money has to do. A currency, in his framing, needs an enforcement mechanism to function as a settlement medium or a store of wealth, and a project started by a handful of individuals cannot supply one. He treated holding crypto as a matter of personal taste, comparable to valuing the work of a particular artist, and earlier in the same conversation he defined wealth as a share of global purchasing power rather than as gold, diamonds or currencies, though he did not connect that definition back to crypto. On illicit use he was blunt, arguing that crypto helps criminals and facilitates illicit transactions. On regulation he went further, saying “I think we're all better off banning it,” while adding that the outcome would still be acceptable.

Li Lu's standing in these circles rests on his own record. He chairs Himalaya Capital and was an early investor in the Chinese automaker BYD, the position that built both his fortune and his reputation as a stock picker.

Berkshire's Shadow and VanEck's Counterweight

Whether Munger's successors still set the tone for Wall Street has become an open question rather than a settled one. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett spent years as Bitcoin's most prominent skeptics, and Berkshire Hathaway's posture appears unchanged under new chief executive Greg Abel, who has avoided public comment on crypto. The claim that such critics keep losing ground, however, now has an institutional voice of its own. Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, argued in 2025 that skeptics persistently underestimate Bitcoin, and his “Bitcoin Hall of Shame” ranking placed both Munger and Buffett on the list. Sigel's desk covers digital assets for an asset manager that is itself a direct market participant, not a bystander, and the ranking appeared as a formal research output rather than a passing remark.

That split now runs through finance itself: Li Lu rejects crypto as a store of wealth, while Sigel maintains the critics keep losing the argument. The flows tell a third story. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have drawn billions of dollars in inflows since 2024, giving investors regulated exposure to the underlying spot trading market without an account at any crypto exchange. In that structure the private keys sit with a qualified custodian rather than with the fund holder, a design that answers part, though not all, of the enforcement question Li Lu raises. A custodial wrapper can secure custody, but it cannot create the state-backed settlement guarantee he says money requires, which is why the two positions have not converged.

The load-bearing part of Li Lu's case is not the insult but the test he sets: money needs an enforcement mechanism, and he says crypto has none. The market has answered since 2024 by building regulated wrappers around the asset rather than retreating. The Berkshire line of criticism now argues on ground it does not control, where custody, research and fund flows have institutionalized the asset class, and even the rebuttal arrived published, as a ranked research note from VanEck. Read this way, the remarks are less new information than the classic FUD position restated in 2026 by a figure whose mentor's skepticism shaped a generation of value investors. For readers weighing the two camps against each other, the basics of blockchain investing remain a practical starting point.