Bill Gates 3 problems with BTC

[b!z]

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

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[NiceSoft12]

Question: does Bill have any invested?

[Brewins]

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.

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.

+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.

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

[Mellnik]

Poor people cannot currently rely on bitcoin

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

Lack of transaction reversals

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.

Potential Anonymity

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

Very dumb statements by Bill Gate$.

[jubalix]

Poor people cannot currently rely on bitcoin

“The effort to make sure your bitcoin provider isn’t going to lose your money and your understanding of the volatility of bitcoin — I’d hardly say that it’s ready for, you know, poor people to have it go up and down by a factor of two and, you know — ‘Oops, I was at Mt. Gox. Now that’s not good. Now I’m at Bit-whatever.’”

Lack of transaction reversals

“So that basic technology shows that digital can do these things very cheaply, and the fees that have been building up over time won’t stand up even for small transactions. Now making sure that the thing is fraud-resistant and that money can be refunded – there’s somebody that you call up if you think you transferred to the wrong account or your account balance is not what you’d expect.”

Potential Anonymity

“Also governments, for most transactions, will want attribution, that is, the idea of a system where you can’t see — is that drug money, is it terrorist money? Should that be taxed? You’re going to have some tension between the attributed systems like credit card [or] debit card systems where there’s actually a record of who’s engaging and the purely anonymous ones. The one where I see it getting to critical mass, along with the government regulatory support we need is where it’s attributed; where we can see who actually did this transaction.”

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.

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.

[altcoinUK]

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.

[Mellnik]

Billy should really retire finally and shut his dumb mouth.

[jubalix]

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.

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

[altcoinUK]

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.

Much of Gov action is way way worse that drugs/terrorism.

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.

[altcoinUK]

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.

[ArticMine]

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

... 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

[clout]

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.

[HarmonLi]

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.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

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

[manselr]

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


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

[el kaka22]

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


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

i see that , and we hope so

[jubalix]

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.

Much of Gov action is way way worse that drugs/terrorism.

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.

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.

[Eastwind]

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.

A regulated exchange will come online soon.

[BillyBobZorton]

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.

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.

[sethminer14]

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