Bill Gates Says NFTs And Cryto Are Fake as Based on Greater- Fool Theory

Bill Gates says crypto and NFTs are '100% based on greater fool theory'. He is not a fan of cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens.

Speaking at a TechCrunch talk on climate change Tuesday, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder described the phenomenon as something that's “100% based on greater fool theory,” referring to the idea that overvalued assets will go up in price when there are enough investors willing to pay more for them. Gates said he preferred investing in assets with tangible outputs, like farms or factories, “or a company where they make products,” and that he held no position in cryptocurrencies or NFTs. “I’m not involved in that. I’m not long or short in any of those things,” said Gates, suggesting that he was also suspicious of assets designed to “avoid taxation or any sort of government rules.”

Gates joked that “expensive digital images of monkeys” would “improve the world immensely,” referring to the flagship NFT project, Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Bill Gates tells us what he really thinks of Bored Apes at #TCClimate: pic.twitter.com/vBc8BaaTup

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) June 14, 2022

It's not the first time Gates has expressed suspican about cryptocurrencies. In an interview from February 2021, he worried about the dangers of regular investors buying into Bitcoin, especially when the cryptocurrency’s value was so volatile and could be tanked on the basis of a tweet from a prominent investor, like Elon Musk.

Gates’ warnings about volatility were accurate . When he was speaking in 2021, Bitcoin was skyrocketing in price and would reach a height of $63,000 in April that year. Since then, the price of Bitcoin has tumbles once again, and at the time of writing is trading just above $20,000. This dramatic fall is part of a wider set of turbulance rocking the crypto world, after the collapse of so-called “stablecoin” Terra in May and the ongoing failure of crypto lending platform Celsius. Similarly, prices for NFTs have also fallen sharply.