Crypto-focused institutional asset manager Morgan Creek Digital has issued a $1 million bet against the S&P 500 (SPX) stock market index, a press release shared with Cointelegraph reveals Dec. 6.
The crypto fund has issued a wager that its Digital Asset Index Fund –– a basket of ten major crypto assets –– will outperform the SPX over the next 10 years, starting Jan. 1, 2019.
The S&P 500 is based on market capitalizations of 500 large companies that have common stock listed on major U.S. stock exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the Nasdaq Stock Market (NASDAQ).
The challenge from Morgan Creek Digital, dubbed “Buffett Bet 2.0,” evidently echoes a similar bet made by Wall Street’s prominent crypto critic Warren Buffett, who in 2008 bet $1 million that the S&P 500 would outperform a group of hedge funds over a ten year period.
If the bet is taken up, the firm noted the plan would be for the winner to donate the gains to charity, also mimicking Buffett’s move upon winning his S&P bet in 2017.
Anthony Pompliano, co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital, told CNBC that the new challenge could illuminate more than just the performance of crypto markets for many people:
“A lot of people might look at this and just think we’re bullish on crypto — but you need to look at what asset we’re going up against. Public equities aren’t exactly at their all time highs either.”
In order to justify his firm’s bet, the investor has also reportedly pointed to recent losses suffered by FANG –– a group of high-performing tech stocks in the U.S. market, namely Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Facebook is currently down 24 percent percent loss year over year, as CNBC reports.
Pompliano made a similar observation about the performance of traditional stocks in a tweet last month, stating that FANG stocks were down 20-40 percent from their all-time highs, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DOW) had its “worst Thanksgiving week since 2011.”
Buffett himself has come out multiple times to provocatively criticize cryptocurrency, calling it everything from a “mirage” to “rat poison squared.”
