Bill Gates Has A Clear Warning For Anyone Investing In Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is once again becoming the talk of the town. With Bitcoin reaching new all time highs of $100,000, and Donald Trump objectively becoming the first president to take a pro-cryptocurrency stance, things are certainly looking pretty bullish for the asset class for the first time in a while. Cryptocurrency even played a huge role in this year's U.S. election cycle, with as much as nearly half of all campaign contributions coming from industry participants and individual pundits alike. So even though Kamala Harris saw the most money ever raised by an election campaign in a single day, the cryptocurrency industry's endorsement of Trump seems to have proved more effective. That being said, today it looks as though the tides are finally turning in a positive direction for crypto after several long years of negative news and price action.

However, not everyone is coming out with a bullish stance on the industry. In fact, the skeptics are running just as rampant as ever. One of the most notable of them is none other than multi-billionaire Bill Gates, who has gone public in recent years to issue daunting warnings to those thinking about investing in the asset class. But what exactly is Bill Gates' position on crypto, and why has he heeded such a dire warning to those thinking about investing in it? Does he know something the masses don't, or is his position just bearish noise? Let's take a closer look to find out.

In May of 2022, Bill Gates made a public remark about cryptocurrency that at the time probably made sense to a lot of people. He stated that he doesn't personally own any crypto, and essentially believes that it has no inherent value other than speculation. Gates made it clear that he prefers to invest in companies that make great products, making it quite apparent that cryptocurrency projects do not fall into that category.

Now at the time of this statement, the price of Bitcoin was sitting at around $30,000, having lost more than half of its value since its November 2021 high of $69,044. In the months that followed, several more devastating blows were dealt to the cryptocurrency industry, leading its overall price action to suffer even more. One of the most notable of these was the notorious FTX collapse and ultimate demise of Sam Bankman-Fried. 2022 was an undeniably rough year for crypto investors, and thus Bill Gates' statements about the asset class definitely rang true to many at the time. Yet once 2024 came around, things quickly began to turn in a more positive direction, with prices beginning to surge across the board and Bitcoin reaching a new all time high of around $73,000 in mid-March. So has Gates' perspective on the industry changed at all since these initial remarks? Well, a recently resurfaced interview clip with him thats making its rounds on social media certainly makes it appear otherwise.

In the interview clip with Gates that recently resurfaced, the interviewer poses a question to the multi-billionaire regarding his opinion on Tesla's Bitcoin investment at the time. The interviewer makes it apparent that Tesla could potentially make more money in 2021 off Bitcoin than all of its electric car sales in 2020. It's also worth noting that this interview took place in mid-February of 2021, meaning that at the time Tesla was on a trajectory to make more money off Bitcoin in two months than an entire year of electric car sales.

However, Gates' response to this question wasn't exactly a positive take. Instead, he issued a warning to potential investors, stating his concern over the volatile nature of cryptocurrency, and that regular people shouldn't dump all their money into Bitcoin just because Elon Musk was posting bullish tweets about it. Gates then went on to tell viewers that Musk is a billionaire, and can afford to take on the volatility that comes with investing in cryptocurrency due to his abundance of wealth. Regular people that aren't multi-million or billionaires, however, do not have the same luxury. But now that we've addressed Gates' opinions on Bitcoin from both February of 2021 and May of 2022, the question that remains is simple: If you had heeded Bill Gates' advice at either of these points in time, would you have lost or gained money by today? Let's do the math to find out.

Let's say that for whatever reason, you watched the interview clip with Bill Gates that was posted by Bloomberg on February 22nd, 2021 and decided to put $1,000 into Bitcoin. The price of BTC that day closed at around $54,000, so if you held that investment until December 17th, 2024, you would have roughly doubled your money (Bitcoin peaked that day at around $108,000.) Not too great of a return for three years of volatile price action, but you still are left with a profit regardless.

However, if you tuned into Gates' other interview on May 19th, 2022, when Bitcoin was sitting at roughly $30,000 and decided to buy then, your investment as of mid-December 2024 would be worth somewhere in the range of over $3,000. That means you would have tripled your investment in about two and a half years, which is an objectively better outcome than the previous predicament. However, if in the time between either of these purchases you checked your investment frequently, it would have been a rough ride getting to these current profits. Regardless, historically Bitcoin has indeed proven to be a profitable investment during certain time frames. However, if you are unable to stomach the volatility that comes between, it's probably not a good idea to buy it. It's also smart to never invest more than you can afford to lose, even if over a longer period of time you still end up making a profit.