Bill Gates: I would short Bitcoin if I could | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates: I would short Bitcoin if I could

cnbc.com

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"Even Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp. and widely regarded as the crown prince of the World Wide Web, was taken unawares by the Internet's grassroots acceptance," writes Sharon Reier, identified by the Times as a freelance journalist based in Paris.

In his book, The Road Ahead, she adds "Mr. Gates admitted that he believed the technology for 'killer applications' was inadequate to lure consumers to the Internet."

At the time, Gates' company was devoted mainly to its Microsoft Office software suite. Though, as Microsoft's 1997 acquisition of WebTV Networks indicates, Gates was certainly coming around to the internet.

He later revised his book, which focused on the impact personal computing would have on the world, to include a chapter on the internet, added Reier. (Apparently, he wasn't sold on the idea that the internet would be a big deal at the time the book was initially published in 1995.)

https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/what-bill-gates-got-wrong-...

I have tremendous respect for Bill Gates, but who the heck thinks of him as "crown prince of the world wide web"? He famously admitted to getting his "butt kicked" on developing the web's most important monopoly [1]. While he was prescient within MS of realizing the web's importance [2], he misunderstood what type of competition would drive it's growth and let companies like Google succeed.

Let's give Gates credit for the right stuff: - Realizing the powern of the OS to be gatekeeper to a new consumer and Enterprise market. - Recognizing and duplicating (while eventually improving) key adjacent tech, like GUI and the office suite. - Most importantly, his extraordinary later life philanthropic initiative, putting not just cash but judgement (real "smart money") to work on important problems.

[1] https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1023983/google-kic... [2] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/07/internet-tidal-wave.htm...

I was the architect for a major Microsoft partner adoption of The Microsoft Network (MSN) back in the early 90's. I'd just finished our companies BBS project a few years prior, followed by our FTP software service and WWW support services. I did the whole MSN thing, complete with a training camp in Redmond and attending their party on The Queen Mary where I met Bill Gates. The whole time it was very surreal because in contrast with my work on our web solutions, working on MSN was like taking very significant steps backwards. I even walked out of one of the trainings after they couldn't point me towards a way to automate content uploads to MSN. For all my work, I was then subpoenaed by Congress to provide my perspective on Microsoft locking out third-party browsers from Windows. Luckily the company lawyers took care of that one for me. I very much got the sense that a lot of Microsoft employee's knew the game was over, but they had too much momentum behind MSN to turn back.

> Bill Gates, […] widely regarded as the crown prince of the World Wide Web

I've never heard him referred to as this; what a strange title. So the internet is a monarchy and Gates will one day inherit the crown?

I could see that before IE was under fire from the justice department.

Internet Explorer became the new dominant browser, attaining a peak of about 96% of the web browser usage share during 2002, more than Netscape had at its peak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars

Browser incompatibilities: The plaintiffs in the antitrust case claimed that Microsoft had added support for ActiveX controls in the Internet Explorer web browser to break compatibility with Netscape Navigator, which used components based on Java and Netscape's own plugin system. On CSS, data:, etc.: A decade after the original Netscape-related antitrust suit, the web browser company Opera Software has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Union saying it "calls on Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support these standards, instead of stifling them with its notorious 'Embrace, Extend and Extinguish' strategy".[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

I think it's intended to be sarcasm.

You can short Bitcoin, and he won't.

Title isn't a real quote

I have the same doubts about Bitcoin. If it's treated as an asset and not as a currency for exchange of value, how is this going to change the world? Is this expected behaviour as we humans are greedy? Or is this a failure of the system?

If... that's exactly what its being used for unless its being used to purchase illegal goods (ala silk road - which i have no problem with) but as a normal currency in the western world no one is going to adopt it so its an asset until it vanishes.

Someone is stopping Gates from shorting Bitcoin? Who?

The actual quote:

"I agree I would short it if there was an easy way to do it"

But you can short Bitcoin...

Title isn't a real quote

Gates certainly has the money to drive it into the ground if he wanted.

I thought you could with Bitcoin Futures?

Futures aren't the same thing as shorting, but you can also short through various (sketchy) parties.

You can, on CME and CBOE.

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