Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is not very keen on Bitcoin (BTC) and is warning others to take it easy and carefully study such investments — unless they are wealthier than Elon Musk.
Gates — the world’s third-richest man — told Bloomberg on Tuesday that he is not really affected about Musk’s crypto bet randomly going up or down.
According to Gates, not only does bitcoin eat up a lot of energy, but it can also cause trouble for investors who may not have lots of money to spare, considering how volatile the digital currency’s price is.
Bitcoin’s wild ride continues. The leading digital asset climbed to a new all-time peak past the $58,000 level late Sunday but retreated to a little above $46,000 in morning trading on Tuesday.
Make sure you have tons of money
“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… if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out,” Business Insider quoted Gates as saying.
Bitcoin prices stabilized around $48,000 early Tuesday, but the figure is still a more than 10% decline from Monday’s levels.
The philanthropist pointed out that he is not very bullish on Bitcoin, mainly because of how much electricity it consumes. He also thinks the anonymity involved in bitcoin transactions is not a good thing.
However, Gates said he’s more interested in digital currencies. “Digital money is a good thing,” he said, adding the difference lies in terms of being compliant to regulation and still provide the convenience and low-cost related to cryptocurrency transactions.
Not sure about bitcoin
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has also been vocal about her uncertainty on cryptocurrencies and their impact on the environment, given the huge amount of electricity required in mining virtual tokens.
But even Musk is beginning to show concerns about bitcoin’s growth, noting in a Twitter comment on Saturday that he thought the prices of both bitcoin and ethereum were just excessive.
Meanwhile, Gates also praised Musk in a New York Times podcast, calling the entrepreneur’s work with Tesla as “one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone’s ever made.”
Image courtesy of Bill Gates/YouTube Screenshot