Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has spoken about Bitcoin, suggesting that the crypto-currency isn’t necessarily the best application of blockchain technology. Gates, the Co-Founder of Microsoft did add that global remittances may be impacted when he spoke to ‘Backchannel’ and prior to the annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, being released.
Gates was asked about numerous subjects, including mobile technology and it’s respective role in developing economies as well as AI (Artificial Intelligence) but when it came to crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin and it’s inherent ability in providing cheaper global financial transactions; Gates indicated his belief that Bitcoin wouldn’t be the defacto future – distributed payment system. However, Gates does believe that Bitcoin has potential to cause enormous impact within the payments space.
Gates added that ‘There’s a lot that bitcoin or Ripple and variants can do to make moving money between countries easier and getting fees down pretty dramatically. But Bitcoin won’t be the dominant system’ going on to say that ‘When you talk about a domestic economy, the idea of attributed transactions, where if you sent it to the wrong person you can actually get the transaction reversed. [The fact that the existing system] doesn’t have this huge fluctuation where the value of your account is going up and down by a factor of two’ indicates the cautiously optimistic view that Gates holds about Bitcoin.
Gates believes that Bitcoin remains ‘exciting’ but speaking to Bloomberg, last October for example – he did state his concerns on Bitcoin and existing political complications.
On a separate occasion and speaking to ‘Backchannel’ Gates added that that whilst Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain might make transactions easier as well as cost-effective – problems such as fluctuations in value, as well as lack of network transaction reversibility did remain significant barriers, to broad market adoption.
Almost as an afterthought, Gates stated that ‘We need things that draw on the revolution of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin alone is not good enough.’
