Bill Gates on bitcoin technology

[Guido]

He is very careful to mention that he doesn't think BTC will be the one. More and more I get the feeling that btc is the experiment. They will watch it and learn as it fails, then make a crypto that fixes everything that is wrong and copies everything that works, put their billions into marketing and infrastructure (or hop on btc's existing infrastructure) and go from there. Like he says - most don't care about anonymity, they want security and convenience.

Not good news for btc imo

Actually, bollocks. Neither you nor Bill Gates have a clue what your talking about.

For a start, Bitcoin is not a centralised money issuer, so who is "they" in the phrase "They will watch it and learn as it fails" ? There is no "they" other than the flotilla of alt coins that has emerged and consistently failed to get anywhere near Bitcoin's market cap. Not a single one of them has made the merest dent - apart from maybe Litecoin which for a few weeks managed to reach a paultry 5-10% before falling back into oblivion.

Secondly - hashrate. The bitcoin network hashing power is now measured in "Peta" hashes. That is a phenomenal amount of network power that dwarfs everything else into insignificance. That kind of network power doesn't appear overnight. JP Morgan, Goldman, Microsoft, the NSA could spend as much money as they like and never get near that hashrate and level of redundancy. What that means for holders is **security**.

Thirdly - network effect. It takes years for the kind of infrastructure that Bitcoin has (and is evolving) to be built up. Just looks at the latest Circle offering for example. For an enterprise like that to get off the ground takes years of evolution. No VC is going to go near a digital currency that hasn't proven itself. Bitcoin has been Hacked, Goxed, "China"d, "Malliability"'d and generally kicked to death in the press and emerged from all of that without a scratch. You can't spend your way into that kind of confidence. After 6 years it's now having a ton of investment ploughed into it and we've yet to see the half of that start to bear fruit.

Fourthly - institutions. It takes 1-2 years for an ETF to make its way through the regulators red tape. Towards the end of this year we're going to start to see the first major vehicle for institutional investment in Bitcoin. That will be a game changer and probably the final nail in the coffin for any potential contenders.

Make no mistake, alternatives had their chance and didn't even get near - Bitcoin is simply too far down the line already for any turning back. Whatever technology enhancements are needed from now on will be applied to Bitcoin itself rather than starting from scratch.

good post

imo bitcoin will always be number 1 , but do feel there is room for some of the other early alts too

not everyone wants the full corporate bodywrapping that bitcoin is having applied

[Elwar]

When bill Gates invested on Microsoft it was the first of its kind...

No it was not. He stole Windows from Xerox/SRI.

[Kprawn]

Bill Gates is retired and on pension. His interest in Bitcoin is purely acedemic and general knowledge.

He owns enough money, to be the biggest whale in the bitcoin ocean, and then he gives the mayority away, and within a year, he is the richest man in the world again.

I would most certainly not break my head on Bitcoin, or any other crypto currency for that matter, if I had that amount of money and investments.

Bitcoin for him, is like playing with Monopoloy money. {Geek Coin}

[Beliathon]

He is very careful to mention that he doesn't think BTC will be the one. More and more I get the feeling that btc is the experiment. They will watch it and learn as it fails, then make a crypto that fixes everything that is wrong and copies everything that works...

Yeah, cause we all know how well that worked out with Bing

 

[Oscilson]

imo bitcoin will always be number 1 , but do feel there is room for some of the other early alts too

not everyone wants the full corporate bodywrapping that bitcoin is having applied

Not necessary early alts. Only alts have distinctive feature will survive and come out.

[BADecker]

If things continue on as they have been going, it will probably be easier to massage Bitcoin into something that is better.

If there is a BIG change in technology, or the politics of the world, only then might we see a new form that is not Bitcoin at all.

[lucky88888]

if Bill Gates doesn't adopt Bitcoin, he is going to end up being as the worlds biggest bagholder of fiat! 

[BADecker]

if Bill Gates doesn't adopt Bitcoin, he is going to end up being as the worlds biggest bagholder of fiat! 

If you take the investor out of "fiat" - the "i" - you've got "fat."   

[cyberpinoy]

He is very careful to mention that he doesn't think BTC will be the one. More and more I get the feeling that btc is the experiment. They will watch it and learn as it fails, then make a crypto that fixes everything that is wrong and copies everything that works, put their billions into marketing and infrastructure (or hop on btc's existing infrastructure) and go from there. Like he says - most don't care about anonymity, they want security and convenience.

Not good news for btc imo

What's the point investing millions in making an altcoin that does what bitcoin already does?

The last thing we need is another altcoin.

Especially a centralized one.

I agree with the original poster Zimmah please re-read his post, he didnt say it was going to be a replicate of Bitcoin, he said they will watch it and see what causes its failure then do their own strategy fix the broken parts and blast the scene with a better coin. Do you know much about bill gates, he had a dream  that was not working as he planned actually, he then befriended and took innovative tech from IBM, Zerox and even apple to make his dream a reality that took over the world, then he created a generalized monopoly on his dream so no one can compete with him until it was to late, copyrighted his thoughts so no one could steal his toys,. Now if he did this much damage with computers on his way to riches and the top 10 wealthiest men on the planet, what do you think he will do with an open source project.

[johnyj]

Entrepreneurs usually are very short sighted and only want to earn fiat money, they seldom know where are all their earned money coming from originally, once they realize the fiat money game they have been playing all their life time, they will begin to understand the potential of bitcoin

[manselr]

He likes the fact that it's cheap but wants a network that is also not anonymous.
But it's the fact that it's permissionless that makes it cheap, and you can't have a permissionless network differentiate between users who are anonymous and those who aren't.

[gogxmagog]

He is very careful to mention that he doesn't think BTC will be the one. More and more I get the feeling that btc is the experiment. They will watch it and learn as it fails, then make a crypto that fixes everything that is wrong and copies everything that works, put their billions into marketing and infrastructure (or hop on btc's existing infrastructure) and go from there. Like he says - most don't care about anonymity, they want security and convenience.

Not good news for btc imo

Actually, bollocks. Neither you nor Bill Gates have a clue what your talking about.

For a start, Bitcoin is not a centralised money issuer, so who is "they" in the phrase "They will watch it and learn as it fails" ? There is no "they" other than the flotilla of alt coins that has emerged and consistently failed to get anywhere near Bitcoin's market cap. Not a single one of them has made the merest dent - apart from maybe Litecoin which for a few weeks managed to reach a paultry 5-10% before falling back into oblivion.

Secondly - hashrate. The bitcoin network hashing power is now measured in "Peta" hashes. That is a phenomenal amount of network power that dwarfs everything else into insignificance. That kind of network power doesn't appear overnight. JP Morgan, Goldman, Microsoft, the NSA could spend as much money as they like and never get near that hashrate and level of redundancy. What that means for holders is **security**.

Thirdly - network effect. It takes years for the kind of infrastructure that Bitcoin has (and is evolving) to be built up. Just looks at the latest Circle offering for example. For an enterprise like that to get off the ground takes years of evolution. No VC is going to go near a digital currency that hasn't proven itself. Bitcoin has been Hacked, Goxed, "China"d, "Malliability"'d and generally kicked to death in the press and emerged from all of that without a scratch. You can't spend your way into that kind of confidence. After 6 years it's now having a ton of investment ploughed into it and we've yet to see the half of that start to bear fruit.

Fourthly - institutions. It takes 1-2 years for an ETF to make its way through the regulators red tape. Towards the end of this year we're going to start to see the first major vehicle for institutional investment in Bitcoin. That will be a game changer and probably the final nail in the coffin for any potential contenders.

Make no mistake, alternatives had their chance and didn't even get near - Bitcoin is simply too far down the line already for any turning back. Whatever technology enhancements are needed from now on will be applied to Bitcoin itself rather than starting from scratch.

actually, you are missing my point. Maybe I wasnt clear when I mentioned btc being the "experiment" and you interpreted that as my beleif that it is doomed, this is not my belief.

I was trying to point out the bias of the reportage. Bill was careful to put out that he "doesnt think btc will be the one" right away at the beginning when asked about it. That is not a pro-btc stance imo. What he implies is that the technology is good, but the specific product of "BTC" wont make it. I want toi disagree wholly with his opinion, for sure (I back the btc) but none the less, his position is to not definitively name btc as the winner of the crypto race. Of course these type of billionaires are usually vague about the future and careful to not say anything that could be interpreted as investing advice, so he is more or less obliged to appear to not definitively support it or oppose it in any way.

That "they" are watching to see what it does is not ridiculous at all. "they" meaning tech and financial giants. They know they cant do anything about btc, they cant stop it or control it, so what do they do? they watch, they look for weaknesses, something to exploit. They hope it fails and they can replace it with their pony. Good luck. The thing is, btc could fail. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it could dwindle and fade just as easily as it could "to the moon" no one knows which way it will go, me, the banks, bill gates, or you. I am sure that "the powers that be" are paying close attantion and have duly noted the successes of btc, hoping to exploit any failures to their advantage. Not FUD, just the way it is.

That said, his words are good for the idea of cryptos in general (good for joe sixpack to hear this) but not for btc specifically. From what I can tell from his statements is he's looking towards something like ripple or similar (please, again, not me saying this but BILL!)

Its inconsequential nonetheless. I feel like I felt on New Years Eve 1999. Everyone was dancing around, partying and shouting at midnight. "Yay Happy Millenium!!!" and there's me ... "Shut up! Shut UP! The Millenium doesn't begin until 12AM January 1st 2001!!!!!"

Nobody wants to listen.

[a447513372]

He is very careful to mention that he doesn't think BTC will be the one. More and more I get the feeling that btc is the experiment. They will watch it and learn as it fails, then make a crypto that fixes everything that is wrong and copies everything that works, put their billions into marketing and infrastructure (or hop on btc's existing infrastructure) and go from there. Like he says - most don't care about anonymity, they want security and convenience.

Not good news for btc imo

What's the point investing millions in making an altcoin that does what bitcoin already does?

The last thing we need is another altcoin.

Especially a centralized one.

I agree with the original poster Zimmah please re-read his post, he didnt say it was going to be a replicate of Bitcoin, he said they will watch it and see what causes its failure then do their own strategy fix the broken parts and blast the scene with a better coin. Do you know much about bill gates, he had a dream  that was not working as he planned actually, he then befriended and took innovative tech from IBM, Zerox and even apple to make his dream a reality that took over the world, then he created a generalized monopoly on his dream so no one can compete with him until it was to late, copyrighted his thoughts so no one could steal his toys,. Now if he did this much damage with computers on his way to riches and the top 10 wealthiest men on the planet, what do you think he will do with an open source project.

I think he really does not know if bitcoin will be "the" successful crypto currency or not. I certainly agree that all of the altcoins add zero value above what bitcoin can offer today, however it would be very well possible that someone thinks of some feature for an altcoin that bitcoin cannot offer and actually be useful

[Kprawn]

We all know BTC has flaws, but what most tend to forget is, the flexibillity of the protocol. The Bitcoin protocol is not set in stone, it can be changed. Only question will be, if the changes would be adopted.

What is stopping developers of BTC to adopt features from other Alt coins, when they in theory, was the source of their existance?

So even if a brand new coin, with 100% original code are released, it would still have to go through everything BTC has gone through to proof it self.

Back to Bill Gates - I doubt if he will go through all the drama, to "hijack" BTC to create his own currency. Why create something new, if the thing that you are trying to re-create are already doing what you want it to do? They might integrate BTC within the OS and derive income from that. {Development wages are high and marketing even higher}

The added benefit of using BTC is the broad adoption from both consumers and merchants, that are already in place with BTC

They do not have to buy out a company or pay a company millions to use BTC because it's open source and free to use.

[michaelb87]

He probably has some Bitcoins in his pocket. Bitcoin is all an experiment at this point, a profitable one for that matter. But it's just waiting to be 'frog leaped' by something better...

[allthingsluxury]

Don't trust anything this guy says 

[Eotnak]

He is very careful to mention that he doesn't think BTC will be the one. More and more I get the feeling that btc is the experiment. They will watch it and learn as it fails, then make a crypto that fixes everything that is wrong and copies everything that works, put their billions into marketing and infrastructure (or hop on btc's existing infrastructure) and go from there. Like he says - most don't care about anonymity, they want security and convenience.

Not good news for btc imo

Yup, I keep reading this from this person and that person, but no one can come up with a scenario.  Bitcoin is the first of a new technology.  It is so new that the old rules just don't apply.  This isn't Blackberry vs. Iphone.

Some altcoin comes up with a "killer app" or innovation that makes Bitcoin obsolete, and Bitcoin users refuse to hard fork to compete?  Cmon!

The only thing that is remotely possible is some organization with HUGE credibility comes up with THEIR altcoin and sheeple flock to it.  And in that scenario, it would only compliment Bitcoin, not obsolete it.  Plus, who is going to dump the resources into what it would take to compete with Bitcoin as it is today?  No one.  Let alone what it would take when/if Bitcoin shows undeniable success to EVERYONE.