Bill Gates also defended digital banking initiatives backed by his philanthropic institutions, calling them "hundreds of times more efficient" than cryptocurrencies.
Digital Desk: At a climate conference on Tuesday,
billionaire Bill Gates blasted cryptocurrency schemes like nonfungible tokens
as shams "built on the greater-fool idea," echoing previous attacks
of digital assets.
"Obviously, pricey digital photos
of monkeys are going to help the world enormously," Gates cynically
quipped at a TechCrunch event in Berkeley, California. He stated that he had no
long or short positions in the asset class.
Gates has previously criticised
cryptocurrency, arguing with Elon Musk last year about whether Bitcoin is too
risky for regular investors and the environmental impact of cryptocurrency
mining. Gates mentioned the problem of getting Silicon Valley engineers to work
in businesses like chemicals and steel production that need to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions in a speech Tuesday as the creator of Breakthrough Energy
Ventures, the climate-focused fund he founded in 2015.
Bitcoin fell more than 15% on Monday
and 5.4 percent on Tuesday, part of a larger crypto selloff fuelled by
higher-than-expected US inflation and the suspension of withdrawals by loan
site Celsius. Popular NFT collections are also being hit hard, like the
celebrity-favored Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).
Bill Gates also defended digital
banking initiatives backed by his philanthropic institutions, calling them
"hundreds of times more efficient" than cryptocurrencies.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures is backed
by Michael Bloomberg, the founder and controlling owner of Bloomberg LP.
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