In May, during the Berlin Global Solution Summit held in Berlin, Germany, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft (MS), spoke. According to the New York Times on the 2nd (local time), Gates, who is the world’s 8th richest person with a fortune of $165 billion (approximately 240 trillion won), stated in an interview before the release of his memoir “Source Code: My Beginnings” that virtual assets have “absolutely no utility.” He added that “people with high IQs are fooling themselves about this issue.”
Gates has previously expressed negative opinions about virtual assets. He has likened them to the “greater-fool theory,” which explains how the value of an asset continues to inflate due to public speculation. He also criticized that the energy consumption to mine well-known virtual assets like Bitcoin could accelerate climate change.
At 70 years old, Gates is releasing the first part of his three-part memoir. He supported former Vice President Kamala Harris during the recent U.S. presidential election season, which the NYT noted as a different stance compared to other tech billionaires who turned to President Donald Trump. However, after Trump was elected, Gates had a private meeting with him. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Gates mentioned that during their three-hour dinner on December 27th at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, they talked extensively about global health issues like AIDS and polio, to which Trump showed significant interest.