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DealBook Online Summit: Tim Cook on Cryptocurrency



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VideotranscriptBackbars0:00/1:43-0:00transcriptWhat’s your thought on cryptocurrency right now and potentially accepting it through Apple Pay or otherwise? Um, it’s something that we’re looking at. It’s not something we have immediate plans to do. I would sort of characterize it as there are things that I wouldn’t do like our cash balance. I wouldn’t go invest that in crypto, not because I wouldn’t invest my own money in crypto, but because I don’t think people buy an Apple stock to get exposure to crypto. And so if they want to do that, they can, you know, invest directly in crypto through other means. And so I wouldn’t do that and I’m not planning to in the immediate future to take crypto for our products as a mean of tender. But there are other things that we’re definitely looking at. Like what? Like, I wouldn’t want to have anything to announce today. Well, let me ask you a different question, because you just said that you might not do it personally. Do you own crypto in any Bitcoin or Ethereum? Or do you play around with this? I do. Yeah, I think it’s reasonable to own it as a part of a diversified portfolio, and I’m not giving anybody investment advice, by the way. When when did you get interested in it? I’ve been interested in it for a while and I’ve, you know, been researching it and so forth. And so I think it’s interesting. While Apple might not offer users a way to pay with cryptocurrency anytime soon, its leader has invested in it personally.Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said at the DealBook Online Summit on Tuesday that he has bought cryptocurrencies. “I think it’s reasonable to own it as part of a diversified portfolio,” Mr. Cook told DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, quickly adding that he wasn’t giving investment advice.It was a rare insight into how Mr. Cook manages a portion of his billion-dollar fortune. He said he has done some research on crypto and has been interested in it for “a while.” The typically volatile Bitcoin price hit a record at above $68,000 earlier on Tuesday.The revelation came as Mr. Cook said that Apple itself did not intend to join a growing number of big businesses incorporating crypto in their operations. Tesla, for instance, began accepting Bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles this year and bought $1.5 billion worth to hold in its corporate treasury.Mr. Cook said, however, that Apple didn’t plan to buy any Bitcoin with its roughly $200 billion in cash — “I don’t think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto,” he said — and added that it had no plans to make crypto an accepted method of payment anytime soon. “It’s not something we have immediate plans to do,” he said.But never say never: Mr. Cook added, cryptically, “There are other things that we are definitely looking at.”VideotranscriptBackbars0:00/1:08-0:00transcriptI think that we have a responsibility as a business to do business in as many places as we can because I think business is this huge catalyst. I believe in what Tom Watson said is world peace through world trade. I have always believed that. And so I think we should be about not, you know, not pulling up the drawbridge, but we should be about building the bridges. And so I think that’s key for business and in terms of what we speak up on, we speak up on some privately, we speak up on some publicly. We do it in different ways. And you have to get your …

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