Masayoshi Son, the founder, and CEO of the giant Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank Group, has lost millions from buying Bitcoin high and selling it low. In a recent speech, he also admitted that he doesn’t understand how the cryptocurrency works, but he believes some digital asset will have a role in the future.
The 63-year old Japanese billionaire and philanthropist recently spoke about his regrets, especially financial misfortunes, during The New York Times’ DealBook conference.
Among the many such regrets included missing out on becoming an early investor in Amazon even though Jeff Bezos offered him 30% of the company before it went public.
He also learned valuable lessons from disappointments such as pouring billions into a co-working business called WeWork, whose plans to go public failed soon.
Interestingly, Son had regrets about Bitcoin as well. During his speech, he said that he bought about $200 million worth of BTC in late 2017 after being advised to allocate 1% of his portfolio in the primary cryptocurrency.
However, BTC’s famous volatility became a distraction for the billionaire. He spent about five to ten minutes per day following Bitcoin’s sharp price moves.
This investment started “distracting my focus from my own business,” and he ultimately decided to terminate it in 2018. Unfortunately for Son, he caught the bear market in that year and realized a loss of about $50 million after disposing of his bitcoins.
“So I said I would sell whatever the price, and I sold with some loss, maybe I lost $50 million, I don’t know…I forgot.”
Bitcoin remains an asset Son is trying to steer clear from, despite the most recent price developments resulting in spiking to over $18,000.
He argued that he still can’t understand how BTC functions and prefers to stay away from “complicated” investments. However, he believes that some form of digital currency will play a significant role in the digitizing world.
“I think digital currency is definitely going to be useful with the security and so on. But, I don’t know what digital currency, what structure. I would rather focus my years on something I feel passionate [about], which is the AI (artificial intelligence) focus right now.”
Featured Image Courtesy of AsiaTimes
