Warren Buffett’s charity dinner spurred the boss of an online-trading platform to embrace value investing

• Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun paid $4.6 million for a charity dinner with Warren Buffett in January.
• Sun hoped to convert Buffett into a Bitcoin fan, but instead one of his guests, eToro CEO Yoni Assia, embraced Buffett’s value-investing approach.
• Assia read the definitive book on the subject written by Buffett’s mentor, hired a value-investing consultant, and became a bigger proponent of in-depth research and longer investment horizons, Bloomberg reported.
• The boss of the social-trading platform also tweeted that value investing is a “hidden magic that reveals itself to you only after 20 years of making 15-20% and compounding it.”
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Cryptocurrency executive Justin Sun shelled out $4.6 million for a charity dinner with Warren Buffett in a vain attempt to convert the billionaire investor into a Bitcoin believer. Instead, one of his guests embraced Buffett’s signature value-investing strategy, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

After dining with the Berkshire Hathaway boss in January, eToro CEO Yoni Assia devoured “The Intelligent Investor,” the value-investing bible written by Buffett’s mentor, Benjamin Graham.

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The boss of the social-trading platform also recruited a value-investing consultant and told his team to spread the word about the power of in-depth research and longer investment timeframes.

“Warren Buffett’s value-investing strategy still rings true,” Assia wrote in a Twitter thread following the dinner. He described it as a “hidden magic that reveals itself to you only after 20 years of making 15-20% and compounding it.”

Assia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

eToro, which boasts 15 million registered users and north of $1 trillion in trading volume, plans to enter the US market and square off against Robinhood next year, Bloomberg said. Its platform encourages users to share their strategies and allows them to mirror each other’s portfolios.

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Unsurprisingly, eToro also lets users copy a portfolio modeled on Buffett’s holdings, which include Apple, Bank of America, and Coca-Cola.

That could lay the groundwork for Assia’s vision of a world in which thousands of eToro users are “value investing for their copiers and evangelizing Mr Buffett’s philosophies.”