Bill Gates says the world can do without cryptocurrency

Business magnate and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates claims that the world can go without cryptocurrency in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last Thursday, February 18. He expressed his disinterest in the growing cryptocurrency industry and shared that it is a technological advancement that the world does not need.

Gates indicated in his interview with the Wall Street Journal that cryptocurrency can be used for criminal activities and other malicious practices. His view of the crypto industry delves into its reputation of money laundering and market manipulation.

‘The way cryptocurrency works today allows for certain criminal activities. It’d be good to get rid of that. I probably should have said bio weapons. That’s a really bad thing. We shouldn’t have technology for that. Bio weapons is the right answer,’ he stated in the interview.

However, Bill Gates had another interview later that day with CNBC, where he was once again asked for his opinions on the cryptocurrency industry. When asked by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin about the effect of cryptocurrency mining on climate change, Gates retracted his earlier statement and talked about his neutral views of cryptocurrency.

‘I don’t own bitcoin, I’m not short Bitcoin, so I’ve taken a neutral view.’

‘Moving money into a more digital form and getting transaction costs down, that’s something the Gates Foundation does in developing countries, but there we do it so you can reverse the transactions so you have total visibility of who’s doing what.’

‘It’s not about tax avoidance or illegal activity, but Bitcoin can go up and down just based on the mania or whatever the news are and I don’t have a way of predicting how that will progress,’ added Gates.

Although Gates has made it clear that he is neutral on the cryptocurrency industry, he shows support for the digitalization of other currencies, ones that are easier to control. The billionaire previously shared in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box last May of 2018 that he was once given Bitcoin on his birthday, but he sold it within a few years.

On another hand, Bill Gates expresses his neutral standpoint on the cryptocurrency industry, while fellow billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent prices soaring on crypto coins such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin last week.