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Bill Gates, the third richest person in the world, is not a fan of bitcoin, partly for environmental reasons.
According to the billionaire, not only does bitcoin use a lot of energy, but it can also cause problems for investors who may not have much money, given how volatile its price is.
“Elon has a lot of money and he’s very sophisticated, so I’m not worried about his Bitcoin going up or down randomly,” Gates said in an interview with Bloomberg. “I think people are buying into this mania, which may not have that much money to save, so I’m not clumsy for Bitcoin, and my general thought would be that, if you have less money than Elon, you should probably look out. ‘
Bitcoin fell 13% on Tuesday, to about $ 46,817, tumbling from a record $ 58,354 hit just two days ago as investors profit from nearly doubling the price since the beginning of the year .
Philanthropist and climate activist Gates, whose book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” was recently put up for sale, said earlier that cryptocurrencies caused a fairly immediate death. He also believes that the anonymity behind bitcoin transactions is not a good thing.
“The Gates Foundation does a lot in terms of digital currency, but these are things where you can see who’s doing the deal,” he said in the Bloomberg interview. “Digital money is a good thing, it’s a different approach.”
Finance Minister Janet Yellen also spoke out about her doubts about cryptocurrencies and their environmental impact, given the amount of power used to exploit digital tokens.
“I do not think bitcoin is widely used as a transaction mechanism,” Yellen told the New York Times on Monday. “It’s an extremely inefficient way to execute transactions, and the amount of energy consumed to process those transactions is incredible.”