MICHAEL Burry is an investor and hedge fund manager, who is best known for being the earliest to predict the 2007 mortgage crisis and the 2008 financial crash which led to the film ‘The Big Short’, where Burry is portrayed by actor Christian Bale.
But what is the story behind Michael Burry, what is his stance on cryptocurrency and what is his net worth?
Who is Michael Burry?
Michael Burry was born in San Jose California on June 19, 1971.
When he was just two years old he lost his left eye to a rare form of cancer called retinoblastoma and has worn a prosthetic eye since.
Burry went on to study economics and medicine at the University of California, before becoming a Doctor of Medicine and graduating from Vanderbilt University.
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He then went on to Stanford University to study neurology and pathology but left to start a career in hedge fund management.
He does, however, still keep up his license with the Medical Board of California by taking continuing education courses.
In November 2000, Burry founded his own hedge fund Scion Capital, which he started with loans from friends and family.
He ended up making over $400 million in 2001 by shorting overvalued technology stocks after the .com boom in 2000 and 2001.
He then went on to make $1.5 billion in profit for Scion Capital investors by shorting the housing market in 2007.
In 2008 he closed down Scion Capital to focus on his own investments and in 2011, he founded Scion Asset Management, a private investment firm based in Silicon Valley.
In a 2010 New York Times opinion piece titled ‘I Saw The Crisis Coming. Why Didn’t the Fed?’ Burry wrote: “Our leaders in Washington either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the real estate bubble.
“And even when the full extent of the financial crisis became painfully clear early in 2007, the Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson, the president George W. Bush and senior members of Congress repeatedly underestimated the severity of the problem, ultimately leaving themselves with only one policy tool: the epic and unfair taxpayer-financed bailouts.
“It did not have to be this way.”
What are Michael Burry’s thoughts on cryptocurrency?
Michael Burry has been very vocal on cryptocurrency.
In a 2021 now deleted tweet, he said: “All the hype and speculation is drawing in retail investors before the mother of all crashes.
“When crypto falls from trillions, or meme stocks fall from tens of billions, losses will approach the size of countries. History hasn’t changed.”
He went on to add, “Crypto’s problem is in leverage. If you don’t know how much leverage is in crypto, you don’t know anything about crypto, no matter how much else you think you know.”
He also referred to Bitcoin as a “speculative bubble,” comparing it to housing in 2007 and the internet in 1999.
He then said in 2022 the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, Do Kwon’s Tera Luna crash, and the bankruptcy of the Celsius network would make the cryptocurrency industry unappealing to investor in the future.
What is Michael Burry’s net worth?
Michael Burry has a net worth of $300 million, mainly thanks to his correct prediction of the housing market crash of 2008.