Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has said that if anyone has less money than the world’s richest person Elon Musk, then they should “watch out” before investing in Bitcoin (BTC).
It has been reported that Gates suggested Musk had access to sophisticated trade management techniques that the average investor is not privy to.
However, when asked about the susceptibility of Bitcoin to tumble in price in reaction to a mere tweet, a reference to Musk’s own social media posts, Gates said that Musk was probably insulated from such market crashes.
Bill Gates is not bullish on Bitcoin: "If you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out," he tells @emilychangtv https://t.co/V7fmKSw0d1 pic.twitter.com/SDVXGddATB — Bloomberg Technology (@technology) February 23, 2021
Gates said:
“Elon has tons of money and he’s very sophisticated so, you know, I don’t worry that his Bitcoin would randomly go up or down.”
The report said that a little over two weeks since Tesla’s $1.5 billion acquisition of Bitcoin was announced, the price of Bitcoin fell 20%, from $58,258 to $46,624. At the same time, almost $400 billion was wiped off the global market cryptocurrency market capitalization. The crash occurred just hours after Musk himself expressed the opinion that the then-current prices of Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) were “high.” Whether this was a criticism or an attempt to deflect heat from a possible investigation into Musk’s influence on crypto prices, the entire market plunged in the aftermath.
Likewise, Gates said that it would be a mistake for the average investor to blindly follow the mania of optimism surrounding Musk’s market moves, telling those who are not billionaires to “watch out.”
He said:
“I do think people get drawn 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: If you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out.”
Gates raised the point of Bitcoin’s energy consumption by suggesting that the cryptocurrency didn’t return much in the way of output.
He added:
“There are things we invest in society which produce output. Bitcoin happens to use a lot of energy. It happens to promote anonymous transactions — they’re not reversible transactions.”
According to Gates, digital currencies are not necessarily a bad thing; but he just thinks that they should be transparent, reversible, and, essentially, centralized.
Thus, Gates went on to describe some of the work carried out using digital currencies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic by noting that the Gates Foundation had used the technology to enable governments to distribute relief funds to their citizens.
Source: Cointelegraph