Photo: (L) Elon Musk ©️ AFP / Britta Pedersen ; (R) Bill Gates ©️ AFP / Ludovic MARIN; Reuters
One of the richest men in the world, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, has warned people against investing in Bitcoin. His statements come after a couple of months that saw the cryptocurrency reach record highs and break further into the mainstream.
The position of Gates is markedly different to that of Tesla founder, Elon Musk, who has fully backed the cryptocurrency. Indeed, earlier this year, it was revealed that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and, as the price rose, had netted more profit from the cryptocurrency investment in one month of 2021 than the company garnered from all car sales in 2020.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Gates said:
"Elon has tons of money and he's very sophisticated, so I don't worry that his Bitcoin will sort of randomly go up or down. I do think people get bought into these manias who may not have as much money to spare. My general thought would be that if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out."
Musk and Tesla were not the only prominent backers of Bitcoin to emerge this year. It has been revealed that Bank of America is in the process of setting up a cryptocurrency division that will assist people seeking to invest in cryptocurrencies, and that the investment bank JP Morgan is looking to make major investments into Bitcoin. The result of these individuals backing Bitcoin has in turn given the once-shady world of cryptocurrency a respectability which has shored up its price.
Quite whether Bitcoin could ever be a tool for day-to-day transactions in the modern economy is held as dubious by some. The reason being is that transactions can be slow and lack the oversight seen in the mainstream economy. There are also huge worries regarding environmental sustainability. At present, the current Bitcoin system, which is only used by a tiny fraction of people, uses more electricity than many medium-sized countries, such as Argentina and Portugal. That said, many are investing in Bitcoin as a store of wealth and some believe that the coin could rise in price to as much as $100,000 or $200,000.
As Bitcoin's price is solely dependent on the faith individuals put into it, there is every possibility that it could rise in price or fall in price, making it an extremelt volatile for some investors. Just this week alone, the price of one coin fell from $58,000 to $47,000. In 2018 Bitcoin was trading at then record-highs of $19,000, only to fall to $3,000 in a matter of months before skyrocketing in 2021 to $58,000.
[h/t: Reuters]
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