Bitcoin stopped being a toy for enthusiast programmers long ago. Today, billionaires, Nobel laureates, and Silicon Valley visionaries argue about it. What’s interesting is that even the brightest minds on the planet can’t reach a consensus. Some put their entire wealth into the first cryptocurrency and see in it the future of the world economy, while others are convinced it’s a speculative bubble doomed to collapse.
The Quickex editorial team has compiled, in one review, a top list of bright minds of our time who are buying Bitcoin—and smart folks who prefer to keep their distance from crypto.
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Smart people who invest in Bitcoin
Among Bitcoin’s supporters are many whose lives and careers have become symbols of intellectual power. They are united by one thing: they believe BTC can change the financial world.
Yeonhun Kim — the person with the highest IQ
The South Korean Yeonhun Kim calls himself the holder of a record IQ of 276. Psychologists doubt such numbers, but that doesn’t stop him from building the reputation of the “foremost genius of our time.”
In the fall of 2025, Kim announced that he had converted his entire wealth into Bitcoin. In his view, BTC could increase 100x.
Elon Musk — a Silicon Valley visionary
Elon Musk is a person who, through sheer intellect and persistence, managed to transform several industries. In 2021, the creator of Tesla and SpaceX invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin through his company. Over time, organizations under his control held BTC worth more than $2 billion.
Total Bitcoin in the reserves of Musk’s companies. Source: bitbo
The businessman also has personal crypto wallets. Unfortunately, he does not disclose how many coins are on his addresses.
Michael Saylor — the corporate intellectual
An MIT graduate and co-founder of MicroStrategy (now Strategy), Michael Saylor has always been known for his analytical mind. Since 2020, he has been turning his company into the largest corporate investor in Bitcoin. The businessman considers BTC the best asset of the century.
Over time, Strategy’s shares began to mirror Bitcoin’s price movements. As a result, the company returned to profitability. Many market participants started using the firm’s stock to profit from Bitcoin’s swings without buying the cryptocurrency directly. Many believe Saylor foresaw this outcome—therefore, he’s a genius.
Chamath Palihapitiya — mathematician and venture investor
A former Facebook executive and University of Waterloo graduate, Chamath Palihapitiya began buying Bitcoin back in the early 2010s. His mathematical approach and investor’s intuition allowed him to see in the cryptocurrency a new financial order—one in which a price of millions of dollars per coin would no longer seem like fantasy.
Chamath Palihapitiya explains on CNBC why one of the most respected investors of our time, Warren Buffett, was wrong when he started criticizing Bitcoin
Pavel Durov — a genius of communication technologies
The creator of VKontakte and Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been famous since youth for his phenomenal abilities in languages and programming. In 2013, he bought several thousand Bitcoin at about $700 and, despite the drop in price, did not sell them.
In an interview with Lex Fridman in October 2025, Durov admitted: it’s Bitcoin, not Telegram’s revenues, that lets him live his usual life.
Pavel Durov interview
For him, BTC is not speculation but an ideal model of future money: it cannot be confiscated, it is not subject to censorship, and it has a strictly limited supply. Durov is confident that one day Bitcoin will reach one million dollars.
Smart people who criticize Bitcoin
Not all outstanding minds are smitten with cryptocurrency. Some are sure that Bitcoin is not a revolution but a mirage.
Bill Gates — engineer and Microsoft founder
Programming genius and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is extremely skeptical about cryptocurrency. In 2021, he warned: if you have less money than Elon Musk, it’s better to stay away from Bitcoin. That same year he criticized BTC for its enormous harm to the environment.
In 2025, in an interview with The New York Times, Gates went so far as to say that cryptocurrency has no value, adding that even very smart people can fool themselves.
Warren Buffett — the Oracle of Omaha
The most famous investor of the 20th century, Warren Buffett, has demonstrated unique intellect and financial intuition for decades. His strategy made Berkshire Hathaway a byword for reliability. But he treats Bitcoin with contempt: in 2018, Buffett called it “rat poison squared,” and earlier said that cryptocurrencies would end badly.
Warren Buffett and economist Charlie Munger criticize Bitcoin
Charlie Munger — the sage and philosopher of investing
Warren Buffett’s longtime partner, Charlie Munger, was known for his clear logic and deep understanding of human nature. In 2021, he called the development of cryptocurrencies “disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.” For Munger, Bitcoin was not progress but a step backward.
Conclusions
The history of Bitcoin has become a kind of mirror for the smartest people of our time. Some, like Musk, Saylor, or Durov, pin their hopes for the future on cryptocurrency and are willing to take risks for big ideas. Others, like Gates, Buffett, and Munger, rely on caution and experience, seeing Bitcoin as a speculative instrument without intrinsic value.
This confrontation shows that the debate about Bitcoin is not only a conversation about money. It’s a debate about what we want the future of the economy to look like: governed by familiar rules, or based on new technologies and ideas of freedom.
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