Warren Buffett Officially Steps Down: The Six-Decade Berkshire Hathaway Era Closes - What’s Next for Traditional Finance?
The Oracle of Omaha passes the torch. Warren Buffett's official departure from Berkshire Hathaway marks the end of a six-decade reign—leaving investors wondering if traditional value investing can survive in a digital-first world.
The Legacy Unpacked
Six decades. That's how long Buffett steered Berkshire—building it from a textile mill into a $900 billion conglomerate. No algorithms, no blockchain, just old-school fundamentals. The man who famously dodged tech stocks finally exits stage left as crypto and AI redefine markets.
The Succession Puzzle
Greg Abel takes over a fortress balance sheet—and a philosophy that looks increasingly antique. Buffett's cash-hoarding, insurance-float model feels sluggish next to decentralized finance's 24/7 yield engines. Berkshire's mammoth size now looks less like strength and more like legacy tech debt.
The New Reality
Buffett's departure accelerates a generational shift already underway. Younger investors allocate to crypto ETFs while Berkshire trades like a bond proxy. The contrast couldn't be sharper: decentralized networks versus centralized conglomerates, transparent ledgers versus quarterly reports.
One cynical take? The greatest value investor of our time built his fortune betting against technological disruption—and retires just as that disruption eats his world. Poetic, really.
Greg Abel officially takes over Berkshire as valuation alarm hits record highs
Greg officially becomes CEO on Wednesday. Warren named him as successor long ago, and he’s been in the background ever since. Now he takes the wheel. Howard Buffett, Warren’s son, described the company’s code last year:
“You do what you say you’re going to do, and you do it when you say you’re going to do it. You’re honest about it. You make mistakes, and you accept responsibility for those mistakes.”
No one’s rewriting Berkshire’s playbook, so Greg is inheriting it as-is, with the same style: buy strong, don’t panic, and shut up unless you’ve got numbers.
And speaking of numbers, the Buffett Indicator, made famous by Warren after a Fortune article he did in 2001 with Carol Loomis, is at 221.4% right now, a 22% surge since April 30 and the biggest since the data started in 1970, and the culprit is [of course] 2025’s AI mania.
The Buffett Indicator works by dividing the Wilshire 5000 Index by the US GDP, and if its high, stocks are getting wild.
Warren didn’t sit it out this year though. His portfolio is still loaded with Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet. He didn’t suddenly turn into a crypto degen, but he didn’t fight the AI wave either. He rode it in silence, letting the profits speak.
Cryptopolitan says goodbye to Berkshire with Bitcoin public letter still unanswered
Now that he’s out, the question’s simple: who’s going to watch the markets the way Warren did? Almost every single person in finance treats him like gospel.
People compare him to Einstein, Edison, and even Mozart. Someone once joked that calling yourself “the next Warren Buffett” is like calling yourself Mozart while looking like Salieri in Amadeus, the guy who listened in awe, knowing he’d never match it.
A $1 million investment in the S&P 500 from 1957 to 2007 would have landed you $166 million. That same amount with Warren gets you $81 billion. How insane is that?
Add another 18 years, and your portfolio would now be worth $428 billion. The author of this article wrote Warren a public letter exactly a year ago, asking him to invest in Bitcoin before retiring, to finish his legacy with crypto. He ghosted us. Classic. I’ve held BRK.B since 2020, but with Warren leaving, I can’t say what happens next.
The certainty is gone. I don’t know what to feel.
Goodbye, Warren.
