Bill Gates Says Crypto and NFTs Are All About Finding a ‘Greater Fool’

In the same talk, the tycoon and philanthropist has mocked the well-known NFT series Bored Ape, drawings of monkeys with a bored face that have been sold for millions of dollars a unit. “Obviously, digital images of super expensive monkeys will greatly improve the world,” he joked about these images, used massively by supporters of cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Gates has assured that he does not have any investment in this type of cryptoactive nor does he plan to have it in the future. He has also declared himself more in favor of companies and organizations (“like farms”) that produce products or services that can be consumed or used, rather than in the crypto economy “based on anonymity to avoid paying taxes”.

Gates’ criticism of crypto assets comes at a time when they have accumulated several weeks of declines. Bitcoin, his flagship, is about to drop below $20,000, which would mean that it has lost all the value gained since the great cryptocurrency boom of fall 2020 and winter 2021.

This fall is seriously affecting the entire secondary economy built around cryptocurrencies. An example is the exchange platforms, which have already started layoffs; or the crypto miners, who have reduced their activity considerably due to this collapse in prices and the rise in the cost of energy. This decrease in their activity has meant that they stop throwing thousands of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The topic of Gates’ talk was really climate change and global warming. The 66-year-old tycoon thinks it is “extremely unlikely” that society will be able to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.