Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and a tech philanthropist turned philanthropist, may not be a fan of bitcoins and digital resources.
Asked during an interview published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal about what technological advances the world could not do without, Gates said this:
“The way cryptocurrency works today allows for certain criminal activities. It would be nice to get rid of that, “he quickly added,” I probably should have said bio weapons. That’s very bad. “
Gates’ comments imply that tech billionaires are not Bitcoin BTCUSD,
BTC.1,
enthusiastic, but his observations may suggest that he believes cryptocurrencies are prone to being mistreated by scammers and in money laundering schemes, a common criticism of the decentralized digital asset that was created in 2009.
During a CNBC interview aired Thursday, Gates took a more moderate stance, describing his views on bitcoin as “neutral.”
“I don’t have bitcoins, I’m not short bitcoins, so I had a neutral view,” he said in the interview aired on CNBC’s “Sqawk Box” program.
“I think moving money to a more digital way and reducing transaction costs, that’s something the Gates Foundation does in developing countries,” he added.
“Bitcoin can go up and down just depending on the craze or whatever the opinions are and I don’t have a way to predict how this will progress,” he said.
Bitcoin prices have experienced parabolic movements lately, despite critics saying it is a technology that seeks to solve a problem that does not exist, while large amounts of energy are used to create a unique bitcoin.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Gates has debated bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, but beliefs have faltered over time. In 2018, he said in a separate “Squawk Box” interview that he would bet on Bitcoin if he could.
“As an asset class, you don’t produce anything, so you shouldn’t expect it to increase. It’s a kind of pure investment “biggest madness theory,” Gates told CNBC two years ago.
Cryptocurrency 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
rose 2.7%, the S&P 500 SPX index,
maintained a 4% year-on-year gain, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
has increased by almost 8% so far this year. GC00 gold,
an asset that bitcoin often faces, falling 6.4% since early 2021.
Gates, who has a net worth of $ 123 billion, according to Forbes, making him the second richest man in the world behind AMZN Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, has been drawing more attention from his comments about the COVID-19 pandemic, which has ravaged the national economy and halted most of the world’s personal and business activity.