Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Cryptocurrency
Tom Sanders
Bill Gates has expressed his thoughts on cryptocurrency during a Reddit Q&A.
The Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist and ultra-billionaire took to Reddit this week to host his tenth 'Ask Me Anything' on the platform.
"You can ask me about preventing pandemics, our work at the foundation, or anything else," he wrote on the post.
And ask people did, with many quizzing the billionaire on one thing in particularly - crypto.
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In response, the tech mogul admitted that he doesn’t hold any investments in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies because doing so isn’t 'adding anything to society.'
While other tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey have invested heavily in digital currencies in recent years, Gates, currently the fourth-richest person in the world, has claimed he doesn’t see any value in crypto investments and has advised others to steer clear of them.
“I like investing in things that have valuable output,” he explained.
“The value of companies is based on how they make great products. The value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it so not adding to society like other investments.”
This is not the first time Gates has expressed scepticism over cryptocurrency - during a February interview with Bloomberg, the billionaire warned people not to get sucked into the ‘gold rush’ nature if they don’t have the financial means to protect their investments.
"I do think people get bought into these manias, who may not have as much money to spare, so I'm not bullish on Bitcoin, and my general thought would be that, if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out," he said.
Elsewhere, Gates also criticised the environmental impact of crypto-mining, which accounts for an enormous amount of unsustainable energy consumption. In 2021, it accounted for 0.5 percent of the electricity used globally, with that number set to increase if trends continue.
Although controversial at the time, Gates’ criticisms of bitcoin has since been vindicated, as the global crypto market was rocked with an unprecedented crash this month following the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin last week, which has dragged down numerous other digital currencies with it.
Bitcoin is currently down 27 percent this month, Ethereum has backslid by 36 percent, and the NFT market has declined by a whopping 92 percent.
Gates isn’t the only billionaire to express doubts over cryptocurrency though - when asked about his thoughts on the subject, Warren Buffett claimed it was a worthless investment that he 'wouldn't spend $25 on.'
“If you ... owned all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it,” Buffett said. “Because what would I do with it? I’ll have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything,” the 91-year-old investor told NBC.
“Whether it goes up or down in the next year or five years or 10 years, I don’t know. But one thing I’m sure of is that it doesn’t multiply, it doesn’t produce anything,” he said.
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