Buffett: You Can't Make a Good Deal with Bad People
Justin Sun purchased a charity lunch with Buffett for $4.57 million in 2019.
Tron founder Justin Sun set a record in 2019 by winning the right to have lunch with Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett for $4,567,888 in an eBay charity auction, with the proceeds donated to the Glide Foundation, a homeless service organization in San Francisco.
Buffett has previously disparaged Bitcoin, calling it "probably rat poison squared," an illusion, and lacking unique value, comparing it to the zero on a roulette wheel during that year's shareholder meeting. Sun expressed hope to change Buffett's stance through communication and planned to invite industry figures. The lunch, originally scheduled for July 25, was postponed due to Sun's claim of kidney stones; during this time, he denied Chinese media reports about illegal fundraising and money laundering and publicly apologized for excessive self-promotion. The lunch was rescheduled, and Glide confirmed it had received the donations.
The auction has been held since 2000. 2019 was not the last year: it was suspended in 2020-2021 due to the pandemic, and in 2022, an anonymous buyer purchased the 21st and what Buffett announced as the last solo lunch for about $19 million, raising approximately $53.2 million for Glide in total. In 2026, he will co-auction with Stephen Curry, with an anonymous bidder offering about $9 million. The public reason for stopping the solo lunches was age and the amount raised, and English reports did not attribute this to the recent gathering.
"You can't make a good deal with bad people" is a principle of character long cited by Buffett and Charlie Munger, but public materials did not specifically apply it to this lunch. Berkshire has not allocated Bitcoin as a company reserve since.
The high-priced lunch tied cryptocurrency promotion to charity auctions but did not alter Berkshire's asset allocation discipline. The auction record was subsequently broken by a higher bid, indicating that the mechanism is still in place.
In market mechanics, the buyer seeks to purchase exposure alongside an idol and industry visibility, while the seller monetizes time for charitable investors. The driving force is the spread of the record bid itself, not an investment agreement. Funds move from bidders' accounts to Glide. Beneficiaries are the charity and the projects gaining exposure, while the pressure falls on those misreading the lunch as an investment endorsement.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Warren Buffett sells three hours with a set of principles, not a balance sheet. Justin Sun buys the spotlight and a bet to "change Omaha's mind." The rat poison metaphor was stated before the lunch, and afterward, Berkshire still avoids Bitcoin, indicating the gathering did not achieve its persuasive goal. The kidney stone rescheduling, fundraising rumors, and apologies turned a steak into continuous news, which is standard acceleration in crypto marketing, not due diligence in value investing. The $19 million anonymous auction in 2022 shows he did not close shop due to being 'harvested,' but simply marked the end of solo lunches before reopening with Curry.
The capital path is auction funds going to charity, attention going to TRON and BitTorrent narratives. The cash acquisition of BitTorrent was one of its few fiat deals at the time. The motivation is to borrow the highest symbols of traditional finance to endorse tokens; the strategic failure lies in the subject himself excluding Bitcoin from understandable productive assets. The principle of a good deal here is reader association, not a courtroom judgment.
Comparable objects include various celebrity charity auction items, sports star dinner financing, and later various "dinners with regulators" lobbying. This round of crypto has made the price itself a form of communication. The phase is the anxiety of legitimization after the 2017 ICO boom: needing Omaha to prove it is not rat poison.
This is a failed case of pricing power transfer. The transfer attempted to occur in "who defines the value of assets." The mechanism is: high-priced purchases of explanatory rights, but the explanatory rights remain within the buyer's capability circle. The capability circle does not accept non-cash-flow tokens, so the lunch is just lunch. The record was surpassed by the $19 million in subsequent years, indicating that the pricing power of charity auctions lies in charity, not in the guests' industry.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Can afford the lunch, but can't take away the other party's capability circle.
Record bids buy communication first, not the balance sheet.
Suspending auctions looks at the calendar and total amount, not at a steak dinner.