Bill Gates issues serious bitcoin warning as Tesla billionaire Elon Musk attacks ‘Mania’ cryptography

Billionaires, from Microsoft founder who became global philanthropist Bill Gates, to Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, are weighing in on bitcoin (even Mark Cuban can’t resist).

After Musk sent the price of bitcoin markedly higher with pro-bitcoin tweets, Tesla added $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin to its balance sheet – pushing bitcoin even higher.

Now, with senior Federal Reserve officials expressing their surprise at the latest bitcoin rally, Bill Gates has warned that people with less money than Musk should “probably be careful”.

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“Elon has a lot of money and is very sophisticated, so I don’t worry that his bitcoin will go up or down at random,” said Gates Bloomberg in an interview. “I really think people are driven into these crazes that may not have much money to spend. My general thought would be that if you have less money than Elon, you should probably be careful.”

Later, speaking on the exclusive guest chat app Clubhouse, Gates said he did not invest personally in bitcoin, telling presenter Andrew Sorkin that he preferred to put his money in companies “that make products” and that he did not choose his investments based on if they would appreciate it in value.

Bitcoin’s price is known for its extreme volatility, rising to almost $ 60,000 last week, after dropping to less than $ 4,000 in March 2020. It rebounded over the summer and started its last bull run in October, overtaking its 2017 peak in December, as institutional investors showed renewed interest in digital assets.

Last week, the combined value of the 18.6 million bitcoin tokens in circulation reached $ 1 trillion for the first time – double the $ 500 billion it started in 2021 when the cryptocurrency craze came back in force.

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Musk, who briefly overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as the richest person in the world this year, has long supported bitcoin and cryptocurrencies – regularly tweeting about bitcoin’s rival dogecoin “joke”. Some suggested that Musk’s wild tweets could attract the attention of US regulators.

Despite the drop in bitcoin price by almost 20% over the past week, many in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency community remain optimistic about their prospects – pointing to the inflation spectrum as a factor of interest in bitcoin due to its limited supply.

“With the Fed’s commitment to maintaining economic support and the prospect of a new stimulus package, market concerns about a sudden rise in inflation are growing,” said Artur Sapek, general manager of cryptocurrency trading and Cryptowatch graphics platform , in email comments.

“Regardless of whether inflation really materializes or not, the fact that bitcoin has soared today highlights that the market is beginning to understand and buy the value proposition that underpins this $ 950 billion asset.”