Bitcoin Forum

Bill Gates recently published a blog post reflecting on 2019, in which he noted that his extreme wealth is unfair. Here’s why Bitcoin fixes this:

https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-solves-this-bill-gates-talks-about-the-us-wealth-gap/

What do you think, guys?

Terrible article. This is how the author proposes we solve income inequality:


That opportunity is only available to early adopters with disposable capital. Poor people don't have disposable capital to begin with. And years from now, these early adopter opportunities will have disappeared anyway.

Bitcoin is just another form of capital. It may transfer wealth from one group/class to another over time as the price rises, but it doesn't address the underlying mechanisms that cause the wealth gap -- real property distribution, capitalist and banking economies, etc.

@squatter. It is clickbait. However, there are some bitcoiners who say something similar in their own echo chamber. Are those type of clickbaits created by the echo chamber or was the echo chamber created by those clickbaits hehehe?

just another bullshit wall of text by another bullshit website desperate for traffic. and it is using the current price rising trend to publish the new bullshit articles that sound positive and related to "price rise" and "get rich" whereas not so long ago the same bullshit websites were publishing the negative version of the same garbage talking about how bitcoin is going down and is worth nothing!

nah, it is just a market that some newbies think they can make money from.
they keep creating websites and fill them with garbage and think now they can become rich. when that doesn't happen they start spamming the link on the internet.

I completely agree to the point of Mr. Gates where he said,


However, I am 100% sure that bitcoin can't solve this issue of income inequality. It would have been only possible if common people can mine it with an average laptop and not on an expensive mining rig. Bitcoin really doesn't give that chance and hence miners with deep pocket are only able to sustain themselves while small home miners a left out from the race!

Bitcoin indeed proves the statement - fortune favors the brave! Those who have jumped into this race during inception, they are the most fortunate ones! Rest all are struggling!

Article title is intentionally ambiguous. Non-comprehensive readers would immediately think that Bill Gates actually said that Bitcoin could solve this problem, when in fact, he just wants a tax reform, and is nowhere telling Bitcoin would solve this problem. Article writers tend to involve Bitcoin in every problem and believes it is always the solution for most of the economic problems, even when the line is blurry.

Believe me, you don't see the worst thing yet.

Can't believe somebody still read from that website if they write a deliberate clickbait-low quality-shit article like this.

Bill Gates is a known critic of Bitcoin so why should we think that he would suddenly propose even a solution involving bitcoin, let alone speak highly about it in terms of inequality?

Every now and then you see some opportunity which has been created by new technology and the quickest to seize them are those who get richest first. It's why things like the Internet connection market and computer market, the movie market even are saturated with leaders. They came first. Others who came later got the smallest share.

How long would it take for the wealthiest Fiat Millionaires and Billionaires to buy most of the available bitcoins out there? Yes, some of the early investors will benefit from this shift, but the poorest of the poor will not have had the extra money to buy in and they would once again miss the boat.

The Institutional investors and also the financial advisors to the filthy rich, already took notice of the fact that Bitcoin as an investment are doing very well and that they should have a finger in the pie, so most of them are already buying up bitcoins to cash in on the possible profits in the future.  :P

I am for looking the adequate and workable solutions addressing the gap in the economic status of the people. However, I do not believe that we should look at Bitcoin like a magic bean that can cure this gap challenge. Maybe Bitcoin can be one of the many tools we can use but by itself alone it can never be the cure we are looking for. The gap problem has had been there since time immemorial and for it to be solved it must be the whole society that should be involved but the way the society is structured right now I don't think ti can be easy to get the support of programs addressing this problem. Nonetheless, I do admire for Bill Gates to opening up this topic for all to discuss, who knows the dream can be a big reality at the right time.

I thought Bill Gates talked about bitcoin but after reading the article they just make a conclusion that bitcoin can solve this problem, I mean wealth Gap is a serious problem that can't be solved easily, the Government should increase the taxes especially for the richest people as has already proposed by Bill Gates, so this is nothing to do with bitcoin. The article says that everyone can increase their wealth by participating in the market, well sadly it's not just easy, they can be rich or maybe collapse.

This article does not have any value.
excerpt a paragraph from the article:
'' Gates composed his thoughts last Tuesday, in which he recorded on 2019 and his pressing concerns regarding the US tax system. He proposed one solution which could help close the gap, which is for US authorities to raise taxes on the wealthy.''
Bill Gates is only trying to reform the US tariff here, he never mentioned bitcoin.

Clearly, bitcoin cannot solve the problem of rich and poor and the world of tariffs. The truth is it's hard to tax bitcoin holders.
Bitcoin is a form of speculation to make a profit, so the rich will continue to be rich, and the poor will be poor.

I really don't think Bitcoin can solve these problems alone. If for some reason one-day cryptocurrency was no longer able to be traded against fiat currency then I'm pretty sure that the cryptocurrency markets would crash as people would scramble to try and get their money out of it. Look what happened when the 20017 bubble brust, alll of those would be investors who where taking loans out against their houses and emptying their life savings into Bitcoin got left holding the bag when the price deflated.
  I think cyrptocurrencies like Bitcoin need it's own stable-coin to work within government and society. I think this is why China is taking the initiative to create it's own version of a stablecoin.

Agree, Bitcoin cannot solve it, it's a good topic of discussion but right now - even with bitcoin, if you have more you will earn more as you say.

Fortune does indeed favor the brave.

I would love a solution where we can reward equally, it will come in time, we just all have to keep our eyes open for it.

I don't get why the article included Bitcoin in the discussion. It's not even part of the first discussion. It's all about Bill Gates saying that rich people should pay more tax including them than the poorer one which I can agree. But what's the correlation of wealth gap to Bitcoin by the way? Would it solve the problem? No. Bitcoin wasn't made to solve wealth gap problems of a country.

Exactly... I gave the article a read... The author clearly is ignorant of "Capitalist values" ^{( I bet the author hasn't read any work of carl marx )} and different "supposed" ways to redistribute wealth... E.G UBI ^{(Universal Basic Income)} and things like raising the minimum salary of employees^[1] (https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/gravity-increases-employee-minimum-salary-to-70k-trnd/index.html). Although I'm not sure about UBI but this minimum salary increase paints a convincing picture... E.G


This is something what I will consider "redistribution" of wealth. The CEO had to cut his salary of $1 million to a mere $100K to make this happen... Imagine if all the big corporations out there decided to introduce something like this, that will really transform people's life But then again the model Dan Price has adopted isn't truly capitalistic in nature...

IMO, No sort of "Money" can "redistribute wealth"... As long as we will have the idea of "Profit", inequality will exist that's what essentially the word "Profit" means, One man's loss is turned into another man's profit... One could also argue that this whole idea of "Wealth Gap" is subjective. What's the Objective value of "Wealth Gap"? What's the right amount of "wealth gap"? There are no right and wrong answers here... It all comes down to our morals and then again we don't have any Objective Morals. If you want to truly eliminate income inequality, you will need to come up with a new system which doesn't involves the idea of "Profit"... and if we are being honest here that's wishful thinking... The reality is we will ever come close to something like Basic UBI which can help chip in to pay a bill or two, basically subsidising Energy and internet... A new way to fool people basically to prevent the working class to reach class consciousness... This whole idea of "wealth redistribution" is BS without addressing the Elephant ^{( capitalism )} in the room...

---

Source:
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/gravity-increases-employee-minimum-salary-to-70k-trnd/index.html

Well, in this life, I have discovered that some persons don't like taking action themselves but prefer others to be guiding them in virtually every of their life affairs which is bad. People are hearing of bitcoin today, all they keep asking is "if it's still trending or dead" because their mainstream media has made a bad reportage about the bitcoin but they will never research themselves, how can this set of persons be financially? It's a terrible situation.

Bitcoin CAN solve this problem if it is NOT prevented by the banking system.

Personally, i don't really understand  why people always don't try to acquire knowledge and understanding about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin to be precise before making some statements and assumptions. The true purpose of bitcoin and Blockchain technology was to create a system where financial activities are decentralized which will introduce financial freedom to everyone. Bitcoin was not developed to solve financial crisis but rather to introduce financial freedom.

The only thing statements like that will achieve is another bubble that idiots will lose their life savings on and the smart rich will only get richer.

Look who's talking. One of the richest people in the world complains about inequality. He's like a fat pig bathing in champagne that looks out the window, sees a hungry dog chained to a post and screams -poor guy, find some food or you'll die! World is so unfair!

I take your reply as the clickbaits were created by the echo chamber. Clickbaits are similar to products. They have their own public buyers hehehe.

Bitcoin does not fix it. Bitcoin is not one thing that will address the extremely unfair distribution of wealth. Bitcoin does not and is not capable of putting a solution to that problem. Bitcoin is not designed to address it. Bitcoin gives freedom to everyone, regardless of wealth status, but it does not distribute them in a fair way. Look at how whales are influencing the prices.

How so? Anyone can do what they want with Bitcoin, regardless of what their bank is saying. Even then, that doesn't change the fact that the ultra rich can buy more coins than us poor folk, so if anything, Bitcoin helps their wealth even more than ours.


Uh, what would you rather have him do? Would it be better if he ignored the issue completely? I'm not saying that Bill Gates is the paragon of all goodness, but the rich people hate has gotten out of hand. The wealth gap isn't entirely their fault.

Gullible people will get hooked to this and think that bitcoin is another get rich scheme. This is one of the biggest reasons why bitcoin can't get no stable value. People draw in and withdraw money right after they find out that they need to do some work in order to profit. People should slow down with their mindset regarding bitcoin's profitability and think about the coin as the coin of the future.

Gullible people will get hooked to this and think that bitcoin is another get rich scheme. This is one of the biggest reasons why bitcoin can't get no stable value. People draw in and withdraw money right after they find out that they need to do some work in order to profit. People should slow down with their mindset regarding bitcoin's profitability and think about the coin as the coin of the future.
[/quote]

This is the real issue for all cryptocurrencies - many people see them only as an investment, not as a tool developed for specific functions as defined in the white paper and road plan.

I'm not saying that it's his fault that he's rich but he is certainly adding to the existence of the gap. Sitting in a Tesla and complaining that the world is getting polluted because of all those other stinky cars is as dumb and self-centered as it gets. Is he doing something to make the gap smaller or is he still stacking millions of dollars in his bank accounts and investments?
I don't mind rich people, but I don't like it when rich people are talking how unequal the world is. They thrive on this inequality because a poor guy always has to pay twice. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer in this world. That's the way it is and that's also how Gates made money from money so he can spare us his bullshit.

I wonder how bitcoin will close the wealth gap when bitcoin itself is showing it most clearly. The whales, but the minority, hold a huge amount of bitcoins, while most people own a bit of bitcoins, and bitcoins are getting scarcer.

The wealthy is always several steps ahead of the masses and ordinary people like us. We just have to accept that. It is the truth and no amount of denying will keep us away from that reality.

Right now, so many people want to have as many Bitcoin as possible. The rich can do that, buy hundreds of Bitcoin. The poor can only afford satoshis.

That's great and all, but what is he supposed to do at this point? Redistribute his wealth? He's already doing that through his charities lol.


How is this even remotely close to what he actually said? He was pushing for higher taxes for rich people lol. The ideas he was proposing were completely anti-rich. He wasn't complaining about the gap, he was thinking about solutions on how to reduce it, and it requires zero adjustments from people riding stinky cars. As for climate change, he does have his own stance (https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change), and it's mostly about spending money on R&D, precisely so poor people (and everyone else really) would have actual viable (i.e. not anti-poor like everyone should buy Teslas) options to reduce their carbon footprint.


That's capitalism for you, which Bitcoin ironically enables. The reality is, we all play under the same rules, we just get away with more stuff the more money we get. This is precisely the same situation in Bitcoin where whales are able to throw their weight around -- such is the price for freedom. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I am not fully understanding your concept that bitcoin cannot be taxed  ::). If you are investing fiat to purchase bitcoin it is a recorded process and you need to use an exchange and you need to undergo KYC process and if you are withdrawing the amount once you reach the profit you normally tend to convert to fiat and the money reaches your bank account, how you are going to hide that from the government. Bitcoin is here to enrich the smart and if people are smart irrespective of their background when it comes to finances they will make their money :P.

Bill Gates dislike with bitcoin and never want to promote and accepted bitcoin as legal payment currency in his company any time, although bitcoin have been worth digital currency payment with increase to higher price always look bad thing by Bill Gates, when I have much money and become richest person I will promote bitcoin as the best currency payment in the world.

he didnt say that you cant be taxed when you used bitcoin but he is only saying that you are hard to taxed when you used bitcoin and that is true because most countries these days dont state a rule yet about tax using btc but on few countries  , bitcoin on them can now be taxed same as by using a fiat  . though i dont agree on his last statement ,  poor can get rich too he is wise with his bitcoins and rich can also get poor too if he isnt good at handling his btc or his other wealth  .

It's good that Gates it saying it's unfair, and it truly is. But to deal with such unfairness we have Rawls that offered his theory of justice that goes as follows: if you succeeded in this world due to talents you were born with, a well-off family or anything else, you're morally entitled to help out those who weren't born that lucky.  A tax for wealthy people that Gates suggests is a good and realistic step to help narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
Can Bitcoin help? IMO only potentially as a medium of money redistribution. I've watched Mr. Robot season 4 episode yesterday where (SPOILERS AHEAD!) they robbed the riches and sent out the money divided equally to everyone's E-coin wallets. This wouldn't be possible with a current financial system, but it would be possible with Bitcoin since all the wallets are public.

I think every successful business person will do the same as what Bill Gates do and the others too. This is how they managed to minimize the risk of every investment they've had before. And they see bitcoin as a risky investment because of the volatility and the time frame to actually get the targeted profit. I guess they aren't good in trading assets because they were better of selling their own products.

How can you say that Bill gates is against bitcoins ?   Microsoft Office Roadmap Shows Bitcoin Currency Format Support for Excel (https://cryptovest.com/news/microsoft-office-roadmap-shows-bitcoin-currency-format-support-for-excel/).  Can you show any evidence which shows that Microsoft is discoursing bitcoins and crypto ? I do not think so and if they ever stop the support for crypto, they will lose a lot of their customers.

Yeah, I agree with this statement, maybe for the statement that the rich will get richer is wrong but smart people will get rich, this is what will happen if bitcoin is adopted. Why did it happen? because only smart people use bitcoin, only smart people are able to take chances when everyone doesn't see these opportunities. The fact is that rich people are not always rich, they are getting richer because they are smart.

Bitcoin has been existing for more than decade already. I believe there are rich who haven't known it yet that first year it existed. Most likely those smart and online users who are knowlegeable about had given the opportunity to earn it. Eventually it became known to the rich. And there wide array of funds can really give them an edge as well to dominate the bitcoin investment like Bill Gates. Its the reality that we need to accept.

But to think that they are already wealthy, it is considerably still not fair for them to invest right now where I can consider their big investment as late to enter the market now that it is bullish. Furthermore, to solve this issue of investment, they need to hire expert individual that will work to analyze the market and to tell if it is good to invest at the moment. But one thing for sure, even if they're late, it is never a mistake to consider investing in bitcoin or altcoin as long as they remain observant and knowledgeable about the market.

If other millionaires were doing what Gates is doing, setting up foundations, helping people, the gap would decrease. It's impossible to deal with it completely because some people are just not made to handle money. You can read about all those people who got lucky and became rich just to lose it all in just a couple years. Giving poor people money won't reduce the gap because many of them will lose it anyway, while smart rich people are making more. The money given to stupid and irresponsible poor people will eventually land in the pockets of the rich.