Bitcoin Forum

http://insidebitcoins.com/news/bill-gates-3-criticisms-of-bitcoin

The last one isn't a problem for me but the first two are. The bigger problem is having no incentive to adopt BTC for ordinary people.

For the first one. Gotta agree, normal people (non-technology) wont be investing in Bitcoin. Most of them are afraid for the rapid changes in the exchange rate. And.. some of them can't understand how Bitcoin work. Unless Bitcoin is value stable, else, people wont be investing in it.

When Bill Gates says these things it shows he doesn't have a very deep understanding of Bitcoin as a protocol. But to give him some credit, he has come a long ways in the past month or two, so I just tell myself that he is still in the learning curve. I think he will get it more and more as time goes on, including the answers to his concerns. At least I sure hope so.

On the other hand, I feel like for him to be such a huge visionary and pioneer, his concerns are pretty short-sighted of him. Solutions to these issues can and will be programmed and developed. It's only a matter of time.

It appears that he only currently thinks with Bitcoin as being a high level layer when he names off these concerns, when in fact Bitcoin is a protocol which is programmable.

As one example, think of all the possible choices of financial intermediaries that will be developed to enable customer safety for transactions reversals. This CAN be implemented and will be. Things like PayPal for Bitcoin. It doesn't mean that will be required, but that's the beauty of Bitcoin, the protocol: You have the power to do whatever you want with it. Why doesn't he see this? I think more education needed on his part.

Chicken and egg problem my friend,

To have stable exchange the market cap of bitcoin must be ALOT higher with many more tx (fiat to BTC and vice versa).

It will get there slowly i'm sure. Ppl who look at bitcoin long term can happily hold btc without worrying about short term fluctuation.

+ Exactly, he does not understand bitcoin hence the 2nd and 3rd points are totally moot.

You cant have a trustless system with reversals.... lol thats like he wants to sell windows with opensource code.

1 - he meant people can't rely on Bitcoin price. Don't trust price and the protocol are two different things. And the same thing can be applied to most investment, if not all. Poor people can't invest much, if at all, by definition.

2 - it is an advantage, but can be solved(?) if you use escrow or a 3rd part processor.

3 - there are clear advantages of not giving away info for some people(they won't steal your identity or clone your cards, for example)

I can see why the 1 and 2 are bad but the 3 is ludicrous.

Exactly. You could optionally select to use some kind of 3rd party escrow type entity in a bitcoin transaction if you wanted to. It just isn't mandatory. It's one of those higher level layers that CAN be programmed on top of the Bitcoin network. So even that is a POSSIBILITY.

Exactly, and that way there is a much lower chance of problems such as paypal reversals. Someone can choose to have escrow or not which makes it their responsibility.

this. 

a good interpretation of 'bitcoin can't do it alone'

Bill gates wants to say there is three problems with Bitcoin? He has no room to talk at all.

I can name 10 problems with Microsoft, right off the bat.....

Seriously Bill Gates, go back to the 20th century; take your new CEO with you also.

I hope Bill Gates sees this sooner rather than later. Because he can make big decisions that can move industries. If he gets it then he can assist it.

If poor people cannot rely on bitcoin similarly they can't rely on fiat as well. At least with bitcoin you have chance that one day the price is going to go up although you still have equal chance it will drop as well. So it's not exclusively bitcoin's problem

Second do we need reversals? How many times sellers get scammed and get forced out of legit business because of preferences towards customers. Isn't that counter productive? Can't we solve that with escrow if amount is really big...

Agree. Bitcoin may be unstable now but.. when "Bitcoin took over the world", it might become a very stable currency. Most people buy Bitcoin for investment, however, it not gonna be the case in the future. They buy Bitcoin because it is a currency.

Why do so many bitcoiners says ridiculous things? I am bullish in BTC but really I think we need to stop lying to ourselves.

Bill Gates know nothing about Bitcoin. ::)
He doesn't know the real problems with BTC,but take the Benefits as problems,that's stupid.
He also doesn't know the real cost of Bitcoin system. ;D

Its funny when rich people get huge egos huh?

im just watching this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6KRp91YAw8&sns=fb

A true visionary. "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Does he really think Bitcoin exchanges are always going to be run by children with no interest in security? His partners include VISA and MasterCard. His idea of poor people are those that make only a few million a year. Exchanges need to take responsibility for market manipulation and learn to cool down panics.

How often do you reverse transactions? More people go to court to get their money back than reverse charges. Usually just asking for it is enough. You can't (realistically) accidentally send bitcoins to a random address. There is parity checking.


Right Bill, you are concerned about poor people sponsoring terrorists. This is your true agenda. You don't care about poor people at all.

He probably owns 100K btc for kicks

you can't just buy 100k BTC without creating a big noise.

I doubt Gates has so many coins. Also considering that BTC taxes were a big ??? not long ago

He can claim secrecy on his SEC 13F form for his Cascades Investments, The Bill and Melinda Foundation, or any of his other investment ventures.

If you watch the way the question was set up he was basically asked if Bitcoin was not in fact the panacea today solution to all of the unbanked in Africa's problems. Of course it isn't today. And he has said positive things about it in the past he's probably just sick of the hype.

If Bill gates was really interested in poverty issues in Africa you would think a way for Africans to use their cellphones to bank would be essential. Africans are already very savvy with older mobile payments and I was watching a BBC report that now smartphone use using very cheap African handsets are now exploding in popularity. Bitcoin could raise Africa out of poverty if they as nations get onboard with Bitcoin as a continent early. As the Wests wealth collapses with the Dollar and Euro Arica would be in a good position if they adopt wholesale Bitcoin now!

Even with that, I do not believe he has that amount of bitcoins

Imagine if Microsoft integrate bitcoin into Windows 10 store for microtransactions. Wouldn't that be a big hit?

He knew about them when they were cheap like the Winklevii did.

The second one is the advantage of bitcoin.

bill gates foundation has 600 billion dollars he personal owns 35 million per day in retirement soo i mean he is gonna buy btc for what like 300.000 BTC per day for the income and risk losing the btc for less value i dont think he need speedy trasactions and personal passes for bank btc wallet but its just me he might have yes like 100k just for fun and may even give his sons but thats his problem my problem is depper i do need every coin not like him

Bills gates is all over Bitcoin's nutsack lately, just join us and pump the bitcoin bill.

If you use paypal with BTC, then the transaction can be reversed. Paypal acts as escrow. Paypal can be replaced by other third parties.

The one i agree on most is the 2nd problem. If certain transactions could be reversed, typically relating to shady activities(ponzies, scams etc), bitcoins would be a lot more user-friendly. The only way i see a solution for the 1st problem is to have bitcoin's price fluctuation controlled. The only plausible way? Partially isolate the currency from other fiat currencies and place a determined price system. Don't see that happening... would be too close to having a centralized currency...

Well bill,  i used visa via paypal to buy something 2 years ago and I'm still looking for a refund (going through the courts). Sure, it's possible to be absent minded enough to send btc to the wrong address but in the future we won't be scanning qr codes bit sending via fb profiles and phone numbers (which might actually be more problematic for some).

Anyway, gates isn't involved with ms much anymore. The new guy sees the light ;p

The problem is that he's comparing Bitcoin's anonymity to Visa and Mastercard's documentation system.  He's supposed to be comparing Bitcoin to cash. 

Its going to take awhile (years) for the general public and regulators to recognize that Bitcoin needs to be viewed as cash. 

The fact that its so new, and its a technology, etc etc etc makes them immediately want it to be different than cash, and compare it to systems that it shouldn't be compared to.

People on these types of panels just need to repeat over and over:  "If I hand you a dollar bill, there is no record of that anywhere, for taxes, terrorism, or otherwise".

This needs to become a very pervasive response, so people start getting it in their heads. 

Ultimately I truly believe the consumer public is going to start seeing the benefits of Bitcoin for online purchases.  The fact that their card can't be stolen.  The fact that they dont have to put up with the bullshit Banks put them through (they closed one of my business accounts last week because I wasn't using it "enough").  The freedom to handle your own money without permission from a bank is going to be huge I think, once people start to realize it.  Everyone's pissed off at their bank.  Everyone would pull their money out of there if they could, if there was a better solution that gave them more control.

All of these things need to become part of the public discussion so consumers start to recognize there are benefits to Bitcoin outside of "overthrowing the state". 

-B-

it is never too late gate's
anyway
if big companies accept bitcoin whether bitcoin prices will go up?

Or have bank/paypal type companies for bicton for those who want to use them. I.e. those companies will compensate the payer. Also the law will deal with such matters. I.e. go to jail for not giving a refund. Just like how these problems were solved with cash.

#1, poor people can use it just like they use any money.  They just use less of it.

Who is using mobile phone minutes as currency in Africa?  Was that the rich people?  Or is it the poor people, who Bill Gates assumes are too stupid to figure out digital currency?  Poor people are MORE likely to benefit from Bitcoin, around the world.

Poor people can't handle the risk, the volatility?  Who buys the majority of lottery tickets - is it rich people, or poor people?  Poor people already buy $10 worth of lottery tickets which might be worth $0.00 tomorrow, so they can certainly benefit by buying $10.00 worth of bitcoins which might be worth $5.00 tomorrow (and can function as perpetual lottery tickets, they can check their winnings every day without buying more every day).

#2, we don't need refunds and chargebacks.  If we give someone the power to take back any transaction we make, then that someone has complete control over our money and can take it whenever they decide.

#3, he's describing a problem for government overseers, not a problem for we the people.

His solution is to take the potential of Bitcoin and turn it into an Orwellian nightmare.  "Now with Bitcoin, people can monitor EVERY CENT YOU SPEND!  Isn't that wonderful?  They can already monitor everything you say, and now as an added bonus they will know what you buy as soon as you buy it!  Just trust them, they won't abuse the power like those other times."  

Give complete trust to the government over every aspect of our lives, that's what Bill Gates thinks cryptocurrency is for.

Before commenting  on this it is critical to listen to the whole interview. http://insidebitcoins.com/news/bill-gates-3-criticisms-of-bitcoin (http://insidebitcoins.com/news/bill-gates-3-criticisms-of-bitcoin) The interviewer does an excellent job of asking the tough questions and Bill Gates attempts but in reality fails to "doge the bullets".  The first of course is when the interviewer effectively pins down Bill Gates into supporting GMOs. The real bullet he has to doge is when the interviewer reminded Bill Gates how he benefited from open systems to develop as a coder, and how many systems today are closed. No mention of the dreaded G (GNU) and L (Linux) words but the message is loud and clear. Bill Gates avoids the issue by shifting the focus to basic literacy rather than coding skills. My take is that he knows that many of the answers are to ditch propriety solutions but of course will not admit to that.


He is wrong on both counts here. First on the volatility issue there are many situations where the the fees associated with a propriety transaction outweigh the volatility risk even for the homeless. http://www.wired.com/2013/09/bitcoin-homeless/all/ (http://www.wired.com/2013/09/bitcoin-homeless/all/). The issue of the provider risk misses the entire point of Bitcoin. The solution is to not rely on a provider but instead store the XBT on a device that one trusts. This of course brings up the issue of malware, in order to prevent the theft of the XBT. The solution to the malware issue is of course very simple. Ditch Windows and run GNU/LInux instead. Now does anyone really expect Bill Gates to admit to that!


He is wrong again. The problem with this argument is that it only works if the payee has good credit in order to honour the reversal. There is a reason why one of the requirements or of a Merchant account of a PayPal account is a good credit rating. Now if the real objective here is to address poverty a payment system that relies on the payee having good credit makes absolutely no sense since in many cases poor people have no credit or bad credit. After all if it is difficult or impossible to make payments to poor people how on earth can one expect such a payment system to help reduce poverty!


He is wrong again. The issue here is cost vs return pure and simple. The cost of doing AML/KNC on a prospective client is close to the same regardless of the net worth of the client. This net worth can be 0.60 USD or 60,000,000,000.00 USD. The difference in the profit potential for the institution doing the AML/KNC differs by 11 orders of magnitude. For this reason the only digital money transfer systems that actually work and are cost effective for the poor are those that do not have or effectively do not have attribution.

+1

Instead of saying "hey, you know nothing about Bitcoin, gtfo", it might be better to write him, welcome him to the Bitcoin community, and let him know that there are or could be solutions to the issues he sees with Bitcoin.

He seems to be taking a level headed approach with the, perhaps limited, information he has.  It's great to see someone with his profile so interested in the technology.

It will be interesting to see if Bill Gates or an organization he is attached to funds a business based on BTC or dare i say comes out with it's own coin....

Either way I think it is good for BTC that he is talking about it.

3 unfixable problems with bitcoin, named by the world's most successful businessman alive.
Time to abandon ship, boys.

Question: does Bill have any invested?

1000's of people write to him, most of them maybe asking him for advices.

I doubt anything we write would really reach him, and even if yes, if he would take into consideration what we say

1. Bitcoin is not meant to be stored on exchanges.
2. Bitcoin is not meant to be dependent on USD value.

That's what Bitcoin was made for. Reversals induce more scams that it can solve.
Example PayPal: I lost about $50 over the years because some shithead initiated chargebacks even though items have been delivered.

No fucks given for government. I can do what I want with my property.

Very dumb statements by Bill Gate$.

I guess gates is fairly torn over BTC as it makes his 50 Billion or so fairly worthless either way.

See, if he buys BTC for all his money, he just pushes the price up, and can not control BTC. He would become richer over time, but in some one elses pond, (satoshis) where he would just be small fry.

His gates fund would be irrelevant as well as much of his legacy as an open source system basically wins out.

The tech side, yes many people may struggle with this, however this will be fixed by hardware and software killer platfroms and apps.

The volatility is only really one way over time, and the tech issue will keep alot of people out until this can work.

Drugs enforcement costs way more than Drugs, taxation can now be jurisdiction-ally arbitraged. there is alot of fat on the bone in reducing taxes and gov.

in some senses btc is the vehicle to help the withering of the state, well that and peercoin plus a few others.

I hate to admit it, but Gates is completely right.

There is no question Satoshi is a genius, many aspects of his innovation are really remarkable, however Gates (who is very good at the implementation level) correctly spots the biggest issue with Bitcoin: that without a regulated third party it's not fit for trade and hard to integrate it in the existing regulated legal and financial structures. No wonder large adopters like Paypal and Microsoft use Bitcoin in a strictly regulated environment where the third parties can verify who is paying for who. In modern societies where drug traders, money launderers and terrorist organizations pose security risk from the state viewpoint only regulated financial instruments will be allowed by law enforcement, and therefore Gates very correctly states that it seems Bitcoin cannot be such financial instrument. What Gates said (despite what the OP states) nothing to do with privacy, it is all about the ability to comply with regulations.

In the meantime ignorant Bitcoin fanboys state that the lack of regulation what Gates points out is the strength of Bitcoin. In fantasy land yes, but in reality it is not.  The reality is that without regulated third parties Bitcoin won't be able to succeed. Only regulated third parties can take Bitcoin to the mainstream ... which completely defies the purpose of the decentralized aspect of Satoshi's great innovation.

The thing is fucked up from wider integration and regulation viewpoint, so it is better we the Bitcoin community and investors listen to smart people like Bill Gates.

Billy should really retire finally and shut his dumb mouth.

no...traders will become better and build trust by merit. Eg BTCe gave a full refund where it was hacked. Much of Gov action is way way worse that drugs/terrorism. Consider the cold war at its height. Govs had nukes pointed at everyone. This is >>>> worse than *terrorism* and drugs. or money laundering. In fact the fact that people in gov can money launder and get wealth out of a country, say china to Australia or US makes it less likley we would have war as they would be destroying their own safe havens

That's absolutely true, but still the reality is that the government define the rules and not jubalix hero member from Bitcointalk. That means regardless what jubalix hero member and altcoinUK user think law enforcement will be deployed to hunt down all Bitcoin operators and traders that fail to comply with regulations. Since jubalix and altcoinUK users from Bitcointalk are unable to change how society operates Bitcoin either comply with regulations by working with regulated third parties or remains a niche solution used by 0.0001% of computer users.

Gates merely stated the fact that it is impossible for the society to adopt Bitcoin in its current unregulated form. Gates is the messenger here and you can blame and characterize the government as long as you want, but it doesn't change the fact that we live in this society ruled by (often) corrupt governments and any innovations need to find its way in this government regulated environment.

Wtf ... the comments from the Bitcoin community like Gates worry about his 50 billion investment, fuck the regulation I do with my property what I want, we want an unregulated payment system that exists outside of tax and law frameworks, Bill should retire, etc.

No wonder with such delusional and ignorant supporters the greatest technology innovation of the last 20 years could attract only 1 million active users in 5 years.

But Bitcoin actually works with regulated third parties. I would start with actually reading the regulations. Here is a good starting point for those in the US http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html (http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html)

... and did the US Government not actually sell a fair number of XBT?

Edit: The real barrier here to Bitcoin and other crypto currency adoption is DRM infested locked down propriety platforms such as IOS and Windows 8 RT and malware infested propriety operating systems such as virtually every version of Windows. It is not governments. Here is an interesting application of firearms to solving the DRM infested locked down propriety platform issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQZTAJ2KLk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQZTAJ2KLk)

Bill raises some great points about the shortcomings of Bitcoin. What he may not be aware of is the amount of innovation on the block chain level that has occurred over the past year. These problems associated with crypto currencies have been solved, but unfortunately not by Bitcoin...Other block chain protocols that have a more dynamic development process are creating stable crypto currencies that can be exchanged right on the block chain so users can maintain full control over their money and private keys. If you haven't looked into Bitshares or Ethereum you should look at the solutions they provide:

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2014/12/18/What-are-BitShares-Market-Pegged-Assets/
https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/11/search-stable-cryptocurrency/
 
In the case of charge backs, multisig transactions are certainly an underused solution. Bitshares goes a step further to make escrow transactions . A buyer can send their funds to an escrow account with restrictions on the state of the funds. The buyer can only release the funds to the seller, the seller can only release the funds to the buyer, and the escrow agent can decide what portion of the funds goes to each party in the case that buyer and seller cannot come to agreement on their own. This greatly reduces the coordination cost necessary to conduct multi sig transactions, since buyer and seller do not need to rely on the third party even in the case a chargeback is necessary.

Anonymity is not a problem either because the block chain is a public record of transaction. The public key cryptography allows for users to maintain privacy at their discretion. If someone wanted to disclose their financial record to the government they could do so an I would assume in the future this will become more of requirement for those who want to exchange crypto currencies for fiat. This is also a major reason why stable currencies that can be exchange on the block chain are so important. If you can exchange different stores of value on the block chain no money every needs to exist the network. That means less sell pressure on external exchanges and no regulations by governments.

The more financial instruments we create on the block chain the more liberated we will be from the prohibitively expensive costs of financial intermediaries and the regulations of specific jurisdictions that restrict global monetary exchange. The future of banking certainly relies upon block chain technology but whether or not we will see Bitcoin adapt to meet the needs of the currently underbanked population is much less certain. I hope it does, but at the very least we should continue to support those projects that make block chains more useable for the broader population.

I think there's a huge difference between just online/digital/mobile wallets and a decentralized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. For many people it may be easier to use a centralized system. Unfortunately they just don't seem to care about the benefits and advantages of an independent system based on distributed consensus.

people should try with bitcoin while learning before serious in here .
thats serious bussines trade

In this video he says "Bitcoin is better than currency".


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6KRp91YAw8

i see that , and we hope so

nah see bitcoin attacks the soft point of govs. As they have been captured by market ideology for the most part they like to make the best circumstances to attract capitial inflows, value and human capital. The people demand it. It's a race to the bottom, and as soon as one jurisdiction leaps the rest follow or face oblivion. Look at the tax breaks apple and friends make through the Ireland/dutch arrangement. How many years has this taken to stop? How many more such systems of tax minimization exist. Bitcoin is the means for us to do this for the rest of us. Capital can now flow without restriction or near that. Any one can now send 10M$ to some one in china or any one anywhere. No bank or capital restrictions. This was un do able before. The gov is weak where its tax base goes/ currency devalues and it can't pay its workers, employees, police, tax officers etc. You money is no good here will be the withering of the state.  A semi downward spiral.

Govs will exist but in a radically altered form, through a death by a thousand cuts leading to the tipping point

Your right Society won't adopt bitcoin, but rather be adopted by bitcoin, by the elision of sovereignty from the state to the individual that btc can enable in a practice sence. Further the money/commodity/currency of btc, is just a facet of the btc protocol.

A regulated exchange will come online soon.

Still haven't heard convincing arguments as to why the Winklevos regulated exchange will be any different from the previous disasters tho.

At least he's not toting it as a ponzi scheme with fake magic money...

Just having Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, talking about Bitcoin is a win.

Having him critical of Bitcoin with 3 specific reasons, is 3 wins.

This is the type of thing Bitcoin can learn from and progress from.  Developers and investors alike will take heed and build whatever company or application is necessary to fix these shortcomings.

Depends on the country. There are countries where inflation is pretty bad and therefor BTC is a good store of wealth. For countries with smaller inflation, BTC has to be looked at, as an investment. And yes, poor people can not invest, since they have nothing to invest with. That is not a problem with Bitcoin
There are already escrow services. Over time they will switch to multisig, which is way more reliable as the random system we are dealing with nowadays. Worst case scenario is to go to court, which is the same today.
If you want to deal with a serious company, they have to look at how to tax it. Same with fiat. The difference is, that you can track BTC via the blockchain, which is an advantage for the government.

the highlighted is pure nonsense because of this
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most-100-bills-live-outside-the-u-s
look at that growth in $100 bills, which are 2/3 OUTSIDE of US. Americans almost never use $100 bills, but there are $625 billion in circulation.
http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/the-value-of-united-states-currency-in-circulation/
what do you think these bills are used for?

100% spot on.

There can be no such thing as 100% decentralization in this world with current technology as frankly everyone is not equal intellectually(Thus a 100% decentralized system could never hope to be the dominant system i.e what some people hope is Bitcoin). But the twist is, Bitcoin isn't fully decentralized, which is a good thing, in fact it's a great thing.

If countries start taking Bitcoin seriously, and banning the creation of exchanges that don't register for money transmitter licenses and comply with regulation etc, then Bitcoin would actually be on the road to stability and security. Of course that only partly fixes the issue, there's still Bitcoin's volatility at hand. However, that issue can also be addressed through adoption i.e the more people are using Bitcoin at a consumer level, instead of hoarding it or using it as a speculative investment, the less volatile Bitcoin's price will become.

Frankly, all the idiots here who oppose regulation are also harming Bitcoin, as regulation is the only way for Bitcoin to reach both a secure and less volatile state.

you don't say why to any of your assertions.

well we dont have to thing bill gates the way of technology for money is also implemente by banks all over the world and the btc might do the trick of beeing good also for banks currency if they look at decentralization like bill gates would not go on it becuse the btc its too conected to the eeast crime he does not want to spend time on this method if its depriciated by name BTC=east crime of course we know its not like that its the good people of using btc the makes the coin and the personal power its good soo btc will rise and bill gates or appe will suggest to put the treades of market selling products also in btc currency for those  obiles and computers.

Volatility, a heaven for the majority of traders.

Exactly, it';s this volatility that makes it possible to profit, only people obviously don't like it when it doesnt go the way they want it to but that's part of the game that they need to understand. The hodlers and long term believers don't really care about minor fluctuations.

Yup but we eventually need the price to stabilize otherwise we can never use it on daily shopping.

He's saying it fuels the terrorist economy. Much better?

Why not? It's not idea but people are still using the currency now even despite it's fluctuations. Merchants will be protected by using a payment processor so there's no excuses there.

btc its not that depreicatible as terrorism its just a bit of crime and left wing crime associated in east but theress lots of good people using it bill gates and other capital economy could do a bit of btc aproval for it to go as fast trasnactions in money.

yes true, especially the unemployed, will only look for bitcoin for free every day, without ever buy bitcoin to invest

i know bill gates can create new amazing crypto if he want
but i think h doesn interest with money

One of Bill Gates' mistaken ideas about bitcoin is in regards to transaction irreversibility.

The following video is THE best video response I've ever seen to the tiresome complaint that bitcoin transaction irreversibility is a problem. Andreas debunks this claim in a few minutes with finesse.

Bill Gates needs to watch this clip so he gets we're dealing with a flexible *protocol* which is programmable and can offer reversals if needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsW_bsFAWgw#t=245

This is why Bitcoin is more powerful than anything that has been seen before.

How do we get him to watch it?

He's not going to like Bitcoin because of the anonymity no matter what.

That's strange to me.. is he part of the government or something?

i have 3 problems with Gates, too ...

1) Windows Me
2) Windows Vista
3) Windows 8

https://cinemabythesea.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/833ec_orig-skeptical_gif.gif

It is, but its not for the average joe whose wants a steady currency that doesnt change a lot. Thats why I think Bitcoin is egold and not emoney.

I only see one problem here. Taking advice from someone that represent the current dominant financial paradigms.

This guy is the embodiment of the current financial system. Why would he want to lose power to bitcoin ? Of course he will gently tell you that bitcoin is shit.

Well, he did not say it literally. But he blatantly stated that there is no hope for bitcoin in its current form to be dominant form of currency. Why? Because bitcoin can't be traced easily, is anonymous and do not allow refund? Thats all great qualities of bitcoin! In the times when BiG Brother is watching your every move bitcoin is a light of hope. That also means bitcoin is no currency for fools and unfortunately majority of people are well... idiots.

The first one is definitely a problem. Poor people can't rely on BitCoin.

I bet Bill Gates will try to fix that "problems" with his fully centralised microsoftcoin. He is just full of shit.

well despise the fact i do apreciate the intellegence and work of bill gates and even the money i dont think hes going to put like money into btc itsd unatural a centrelized money guy to invest in anonimouse money that can get hacked in blockchain need more safe coin

They might not be able to rely on anything else. Fiat isn't immune from collapse or losing value either.

Depends on the country. There are people from countries with high inflation, who benefited a lot from storing their wealth in Bitcoin, even if it is volatile.
People really need to learn, that there are other countries in the world than the USA.

You schmucks who want regulators to tell you how to live your life get very boring after a while.

Thankfully we had Satoshi to render you irrelevant.  Go live your life in your regulated taxed hell, and leave the rest of us enjoy the good things.

How is this a bad thing? Bitcoins are not like credit cards, you don't have to give out sensitive data to make a transaction.

I've heard of a dozen stories about merchants going out of business simply because of chargeback fraud, it is a problem that everyone seems to ignore. Imagine that you sell digital goods such as CD keys and some dude across the globe does a chargeback after he used the CD key, good luck getting your money.

The title should be renamed to: "the 3 problems with Bill Gates"

1: He's tampering with the vaccines, there's been loads of reports that his foundation have been going to third world countries vaccinating unsuspecting population with his poison, they often end up sterilized, paralysed or even dead,

2: He has patents on geo engineering, specificity  atmospheric aerosol spraying technologies. I'm so tired of looking up at the sky and seeing the weather manipulation going on. :(

3: He is the chief shareholder of Monsanto and McDonalds, Monsanto are one of worst corporations in the history of the planet, and their objective is to completely genetically modify ALL our food chain. Also good old Bill has acquired the Epicyte gene, made rats sterile after 3 generations. So enjoy that Big Mac , mmmm I'm loving it!

The list of crimes against humanity is long with Gates, I just choose the first three that came into my head. Please research this man and his agenda specificity with regards to population control.


Should I take financial advice from this person? Fuck no!

Well, if you buy something that then you don't end liking and what a refund, that's a  problem.

If you buy something that you don't end up liking, that's your fault. Reviews exist for this kind of thing. You shouldn't get a refund.

Charge-backs shouldn't really exist. It is way to easy to conduct fraud with the system, and rszibele makes a good point, businesses can easily go out of business due to people cheating the system.

Transaction reversals are not necessarily a good thing. The only time I could see a scenario where charge-backs would be useful would be if there was verifiable theft, but then you probably should have taken better safety precautions.

Well but it doesn'y fluctuate the way bitcoin does. and does not shows drops and increases the way bitcoin rolls

Gold has no new properties to give it any great speculative value anymore. Still, gold isn't the steadfast dependable anchor it used to be. Bitcoin has the potential to make gold non-speculative. Gold will simply be a commodity baseline. Bitcoin will open new speculative channels with each new technology it enables.

They forgot to mention his fourth problem... that he didn't buy earlier on when few took it seriously.

Everything he's mentioned will go through the development phases that his own computers went through.

Uhhh.... Are you serious? Look up his net worth.

He's not in need of a few millions that he potentially could have had if buying Bitcoin as early adopter.

nah this doesn't seem right. if anything, people from countries with high inflation can store their wealth in things that do not have price swings as big as bitcoin. like Dollar, Euro, any other currency, gold and other things that keep the value of their wealth. i doubt if someone converts their money into bitcoin when he sees this:
http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2014-03-02,2015-03-02,close,bpi,USD

or worse than that, this:
http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2013-11-16,2015-03-02,close,bpi,USD

The value of most things fluctuate but very rarely to the extreme that bitcoin does, but maybe this will change over time as bitcoin is still a new and experimental technology. I don't think we should be overly harsh on Gates though as he's been positive but cautious of bitcoin in the past and I'd rather have him talking about it than not or straight up verbally destroying it.

Bitcoin is still very experimental, let's see when it gets released. Also price doesn't matter as long as it works.

It is not that easy to get those things in poor countries.
Seriously, how ignorant are you guys?

Bill gates should see this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8y_GypCWf4

In this video Andreas addresses all the so called problems that Bill Gates sees with BTC.

Now a days, most of the forum seems ignorant. It's almost like most people that had a grasp on current social and political issues have left.

You are correct, though. It's not always easy to access the things that we have in other countries, for reasons such as government issues, economic issues, and the like.

100% agree with this.

'Poor people cannot currently rely on bitcoin'

>> Bitcoin derivatives (futures, options) are likely to solve this problem, making the price much more stable.  In any case, 'poor people' in developing countries would still do better to rely on Bitcoin than national currency, considering that currency like Rubles or pesos can plummet overnight just like Bitcoin, but ALMOST NEVER does a currency double or triple or quadruple in value!


'Lack of transaction reversals'

It's a good thing, not a bad thing, enabling merchants to accept BTC with no risk.  Shows Bill Gates does not understand the real benefits of Bitcoin.


'Potential Anonymity'

Bad for governments, good for the people.  Gates is obviously on the side of big government.

Soon you'll be able to do anything you want with SMS messages, which will solve all of the "poor dont have money for smartphones" thing.

Thankfully Satoshi's innovation has nothing to do with ignorant fanboys. Reading your nonsense no wonder - despite Satoshi has given us the most remarkable innovation of the last 20 years, despite the so much media exposure and heavy VC investment flow in - Bitcoin has only 1 million user after 5 years. Don't expect more with that attitude in the real world where governments and law enforcement agencies dictate the terms and if the Bitcoin ecosystem fail to comply then Bitcoin won't be mainstream. Therefore, and regardless what you wish, eventually Bitcoin will comply with law and regulations and it will be mainstream. That's just common sense and how the world works (fortunately in my opinion, because fuckers like drug dealers, paedophiles, beheading muslim terrorists will have more difficulties to get their hands on Bitcoin).

Interesting insight; The irreversibility can be a thought of as a bug or a feature. The price fluctuations: kind of agree.. Not for poor people (or for that matter rich) to put all their life savings in. The anonymity again falls into the bug/feature category.