In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session on Tuesday, the richest man in the world and Microsoft’s principal founder – Bill Gates was asked for his thoughts on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general.
Bill Gates has never been silent about his views and opinions. Bill Gates has been very optimistic about bitcoins. In many interviews in the past, he praised cryptocurrencies as being “better than currency,” and that it “is exciting because it shows how cheap (transactions) can be.”
But this time, Bill Gates focused more on the downsides of cryptocurrencies. He expressed his opinion on cryptocurrencies as being “not a good thing”. He says:
“The main feature of crypto currencies is their anonymity. I don’t think this is a good thing. The Governments [sic] ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing. Right now crypto currencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way. I think the speculative wave around ICOs and crypto currencies is super risky for those who go long.”
Further, he also goes on explaining how the notion of anonymity can be misused for illegal transactions to fund terrorists, to buy Fentanyl and other drugs, which has caused deaths in a fairly direct way.
Gates was also asked many questions about the advancements Microsoft has made including Quantum Computing. “I spent a month learning the math behind Quantum computing with help from the Microsoft team and a lot of online course material. I wanted to understand how Quantum computers could factor numbers so much faster than normal computers. It is amazing how the matrix math with complex numbers works – nature is doing arbitrary computation but it is tricky to access.” he said.
Gates also answered his thoughts on tabs vs spaces. He goes on saying: “When I code I use tabs because you want the columns to line up. For some word documents, I use tabs. You want things to adjust when you go back and edit them and tabs’ help.”
To a follow-up to his open letter to fans on the same topic two weeks ago, he also posted a separate thread on Reddit, asking users the reason behind the optimism for the future despite all the negative headlines of the day. The thread received 4,500 comments in just 45 minutes.
