Buffett's $17B T-Bill Bonanza: The Oracle Loads Up on Cash—Is Bitcoin Doom Next?

Warren Buffett just went big on US Treasury bills—$17 billion big. Berkshire Hathaway's latest auction purchase has crypto Twitter buzzing: is the Oracle of Omaha signaling another crash, or just really into yield? Either way, degens are nervously refreshing their portfolio dashboards.

Here's the uncomfortable context: Berkshire ended 2025 sitting on $373 billion in cash and equivalents. That's more than double what it held at the end of 2023, and up from $334.2 billion the year before. When Buffett accumulates cash this aggressively, history suggests bad news for risk assets. The man basically has a PhD in buying the dip—and right now, he's not even pretending there's a dip worth buying.

Buffett himself called the recent stock market dip "nothing" compared to earlier downturns where markets tanked 50% or more. The S&P 500 has slipped about 5.75% since hitting record highs in January—apparently not cheap enough for the Oracle. Meanwhile, the rest of us are out here sweating 5% moves like they're the end of the world. Perspective is a hell of a drug.

The pattern is telling. Before the dot-com bubble burst, Berkshire trimmed stock exposure and built cash holdings from $13.1 billion (23% of assets) in 1998