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Microsoft co-founder and tech genius-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates may not be a fan of bitcoin and digital assets.
Asked in an interview published Thursday with The Wall Street Journal about technological advancements the world could do without, Gates had this to say:
“The way cryptocurrency works today allows for some criminal activity. It would be nice to get rid of them, ”he quickly added:“ I probably should have talked about biological weapons. This is really a bad thing.
Gates’ comments imply billionaire technologists are not BTCUSD bitcoins,
BTC.1,
enthusiastic, but his remarks may simply suggest that he believes cryptocurrencies are prone to abuse by crooks and money laundering schemes – a common criticism of the decentralized digital asset created in 2009.
In a CNBC interview broadcast Thursday, Gates took a more moderate stance, describing his take on bitcoin as “neutral.”
“I don’t own bitcoin, I’m not short of bitcoin, so I took a neutral point of view,” he said in the interview broadcast on CNBC’s “Sqawk Box” show. .
“I think transferring money in a more digital form and reducing transaction costs is something the Gates Foundation is doing in developing countries,” he added.
“Bitcoin can go up and down just based on mania or any other point of view and I have no way of predicting how that will progress,” he said.
Bitcoin prices have seen parabolic moves lately, despite critics claiming that it is a technology that seeks to solve a problem that does not exist, while using inordinate amounts of energy for it. create a single bitcoin.
To be sure, this isn’t the first time Gates has discussed bitcoin and cryptos but his beliefs have faltered over time. In 2018, he said in a separate “Squawk Box” interview that he would bet against Bitcoin if he could.
“As an asset class you are not producing anything, so you shouldn’t expect it to increase. It’s sort of a type of investment that’s purely “the craziest,” Gates told CNBC two years ago.
The cryptocurrency’s prices were trading above $ 52,000 on Thursday and have gained nearly 80% so far in 2021. By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
was up 2.7%, the S&P 500 SPX index,
maintained a gain of 4% since the start of the year, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
is up almost 8% so far this year. Gold GC00,
an asset that Bitcoin often faces, is down 6.4% since the start of 2021.
Gates, who claims a net worth of $ 123 billion, according to Forbes, making him the second richest man in the world behind Amazon.com’s AMZNJeff Bezos, has drawn more attention with his comments on the COVID-pandemic 19, which devastated the national economy and brought a brutal end to most of the world’s business and personal activities.
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