Bill Gates AMA on Reddit | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates AMA on Reddit

reddit.com

54 pointsmoonka10 comments

Bill & Melinda have been very active on media in last one month since their 10 tough questions blog post. They are all over the social media with bunch of sponsored/promoted posts on FB/Instagram. And now this Reddit AMA, I am not sure what's the reason behind it but they have stepped up their social media game. There has to be a solid reason behind this uptick. Wonder why?

TL;DR He uses tabs, not spaces. [^1] But then again, I guess it was quite common in the earlier days?

[^1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/80ow6w/im_bill_gates_...

His thoughts on Crypto-currencies is interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/80ow6w/im_bill_gates_...

EDIT: I meant this statement.

> I think the speculative wave around ICOs and crypto currencies is super risky for those who go long.

Directly goes against all the shills on reddit and other cryptoccurrencies forums urging 'coin investors' to HODL (Hold, go long) while the 'whales' manipulates the markets.

In what way? To me, he came across as not well informed on the subject

Do you disagree that govts being able to track "money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist funding" is a good thing?"

I'm assuming not - so we then get to the obv follow up question of how you weight losing that with the purported benefits of crypto?

"The main feature of crypto currencies is their anonymity."

This is not true. It is actually very difficult to acquire and spend crypto currency anonymously. Not to mention it would be dangerous since you would probably need to do it in person with cash with strangers of the not so trustworthy kind.

I'm not sure how to answer your question unless you clarify some points for me.

Are you suggesting crypto is harder to track than cash? Most cryptocurrencies are not anonymous. In fact many of the popular coins/tokens have public ledgers - theoretically meaning money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorist funding would be easier to track and prevent etc

> theoretically meaning money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorist funding would be easier to track and prevent etc

How? Can you elaborate?

Just because the ledgers are public doesn't mean governments can track and prevent fraud and terrorism. It's common knowledge that there are just about 1650 bitcoin addresses that own > 1000 bitcoin (they are called Whales). But no-one knows which individual or company or group of people own those addresses.

So how will any govt be able to stop tax evasion and terrorist simply by knowing the public wallet / ledger address?

>So how will any govt be able to stop tax evasion and terrorist simply by knowing the public wallet / ledger address?

By doing their jobs and investigating, using existing tools, techniques, and laws?

Sure if a government adopted BTC... but I don't think that's likely, for many reasons including the one you outline.

Its more likely a government would use their own coin/token - whether they develop it themselves or use an existing platform/protocol is another discussion entirely. But this essentially means they could know which individuals/companies owned which address

I'm sure if a government decided to adopt crypto - one of the motivations would be enhanced tracking. So the adoption of it would be in such a way that would allow them to easily associate an address with an entity/person

To be clear, I'm not advocating that a government should adopt crypto

Reply on news.ycombinator.com