Daily crypto: The markets turn up again and Bill Gates wants to short bitcoin

Microsoft founder Bill Gates calls bitcoin a pure example of the "greater fool theory". Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Trijo News

2018-05-08 09:52

Totte Löfström

totte.lofstrom@trijo.co

Here are the most important news from the world bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

We already knew that Warren Buffett is quite skeptical to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Buffett’s skepticism seems mostly based on poor understanding, which Trijo News reported yesterday.

But now, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates joins the crowd of critics as well. In an interview with CNBC, he calls bitcoin a pure “greater fool theory”, and adds that he would short the cryptocurrency if he could.

The reasoning from Bill Gates is basically the same as the reasoning form Warren Buffett: since bitcoin doesn’t produce anything, you can not expect it to grow in value. The only thing the investors hope for is that there are greater fools out there willing to pay even more than you did.

Many, among them the self-proclaimed Facebook founder Tyler Winkelvoss, have been pointing out that it is quite easy for Bill Gates to short bitcoin if he likes to, but they should probably be happy that he doesn’t. Bill Gates has a total fortune of $91 billion, and huge shorts tend to make the markets go down.

On the price side, the markets have once again turned up. On the top five, eos (+7,57%) was the biggest winner for the last 24 hours, ripple (+1,22%), bitcoin cash (+1,02%), ethereum (+0,62%) and bitcoin (+0,17%) shows green numbers as well.

The biggest winners of the top 100 were bytecoin (+25,02%), loom network (+22,32%) and ethos (+21,73%), while the biggest losers were bitcoin private (-5,17%) and digixdao (-4,13%).

Worth to notice is that only ten percent of the cryptocurrencies on the top 100 declined in value the last 24 hours.