Bill Gates has recently come into the crypto spotlight for an AMA he held on Reddit.
In the past, Bill Gates has been bullish on Cryptocurrency as well as the block chain technology. However in this 2018 AMA on reddit, the world's second-richest man said the ability of governments to track money laundering or terrorist funds "is a good thing".
Many famous entrepreneurs such as Warren Buffet have been bearish on BTC and claimed it’s a ponzi, however we’ve seen many of them change their minds. Mark Cuban being one famous billionaire who was openly against Bitcoin has now changed his stance and is even an advisor to one project Unikoin Gold.
This is not the first time Gates has criticized cryptocurrencies for lacking transparency. During another AMA in 2014, he commented that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was working on a digital form of money but "unlike bitcoin, it would not be anonymous". However, at the time he was far more optimistic about bitcoin, saying that "bitcoin is better than currency in that you don't have to physically be in the same place, and of course for large transactions currency can get pretty inconvenient".
He was more cautious in 2015, saying that while he saw the potential for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to make a huge impact, he did not think bitcoin specifically would become a payment system of the future.
Gates said:
"There's a lot that bitcoin or Ripple and variants can do to make moving money between countries easier and getting fees down pretty dramatically. But bitcoin won't be the dominant system."
Let us see how some of our crypto fans reacted to Bill Gates comments. Some thoughtful responses from Reddit stole our heart.
However, on reddit one of the redditors comment had a perfect response to Mr Gates.
/u/craigc123 has awesome response... unfortunately Bill Gates didn't respond to him.
Naturally, even twitter wouldn't be quiet on this and had some good responses.
Reactions on Twitter immediately began dissecting the response on both semantic and technical grounds. Bitcoin developer Udi Wertheimer agreed, saying "cryptocurrencies didn't cause deaths in a 'fairly direct way' any more than cash did."
I find it really disheartening that someone like Bill Gates could have taken out some time to do the research before making such big remarks. We hope that with the criticism of this AMA, Bill Gates will finally spend some more time doing the research.
This is usually a trend, when the market is in a bearish phase, people tend to be skeptic and move away. However, we think as the market recovers these celebrities/investors will return back with a positive attitude towards technology. Till then HODL!