Bill Gates, the second wealthiest person in the world as per Forbes, is not impressed by the concept of Bitcoin as it does not produce anything. On Monday, he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” he would short the cryptocurrency if he could.
“As an asset class, you're not producing anything and so you shouldn't expect it to go up. It's kind of a pure 'greater fool theory' type of investment,” the billionaire founder of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said.
“I agree I would short it if there was an easy way to do it,” he added.
Gates also commented on initial coin offerings (ICOs), which represent a form of crowdfunding where investors buy newly created tokens, typically with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
“Bitcoin and ICOs, I believe completely [they're some] of the crazier, speculative things,” Gates noted.
He said he once got some Bitcoins for his birthday but sold them a few years later.
According to data from CoinSchedule, over $6.8 billion has been raised through ICOs since the start of this year, with Telegram accounting for 25% of it.
However, Gates acknowledged that the technology backing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has great potential.
On a side note, it is not that difficult to short Bitcoin as Chicago-based exchanges CME and Cboe launched Bitcoin futures products last year, which allow betting on the cryptocurrency’s price decline.
With his remarks, Gates became the third billionaire to slam Bitcoin on Monday after legendary investors Warren Buffett and Charles Munger expressed concerns over the cryptocurrency. The latter said the crypto hype was a combination of “dementia and immorality.”
The Microsoft software empire kept Gates the richest person on the planet for many years. Currently worth about $90 billion, he is second only to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $112 billion.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
