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Bill Gates: Cryptocurrency Is 'Rare Technology That Has Caused Deaths In a Fairly Direct Way' (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: During a recent "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit, the Microsoft co-founder said that the main feature of cryptocurrencies is the anonymity they provide to buyers, and Gates thinks that can actually be harmful. "The government's ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing," he wrote. "Right now, cryptocurrencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs, so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way." When a Reddit user pointed out that plain cash can also be used for illicit activities, Gates said that crypto stands out because it can be easier to use. "Yes -- anonymous cash is used for these kinds of things, but you have to be physically present to transfer it, which makes things like kidnapping payments more difficult," he wrote. Gates also warned that the wave of speculation surrounding cryptocurrencies is "super risky for those who go long."
The most deadly currency I can think of is Oil.
Windows 10 is pretty convincing proof that anonymity is frowned upon.
So tax evasion is ok as long as he's the one doing it.
President Orange Julius once remarked that Bill Gates should help find a way to 'shut off the internet' to stop bad guys. If he's saying something about cryptocurrencies, our dumbass in chief will think it's gospel.
Just because Bill Gates repeats what's been said for years, it's more relevant?
Trying to finger crypto-currency as "more evil than cash" because it's "easier to use" seems to be cherry-picking scenarios.
How many times is cash used for illicit transactions because it's so straightforward? You can't do a thing with a crypto-currency unless you're tech savvy enough to set up some kind of wallet to receive the funds, and then you have to deal with a buyer who is equally savvy to pay you with them. And right now, you have long waits for most transactions to complete if you're using a well established e-currency like bitcoin. So that's another obstacle in some situations.
I mean, technically, he's not wrong. I'm sure people have died because of drugs that were bought and sold using cryptocoins. I just don't think the tech itself is ever anything but neutral. Again, the problem lies in the motivations of the sellers and buyers - not the payment method.
Cash can be laundered through many paradises. Did he ever heard of Panama ? Malta ? Delaware ? (Non exhaustive list) ...) everything done for him.
Many recent documentaries showed how money can be transferred through these countries and their rotten lawers companies without living town. I guess that for people like him, it's easy to forget because he gates (ooops, sorry for this one
Totof
Don't forget his charitable foundation that has also caused many deaths by pushing American drug company agendas in the developing world.
Russian interference.
it's that it's harder to trace. In theory if you can keep your name from being associated with your wallet it's impossible to trace. But it doesn't need to be impossible. A locked car is harder to steal, not impossible to steal. Similarly you just need to make it hard enough to trace money laundering that the relevant authorities time/money runs out.
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Lest anyone forgets $1B went missing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh and you wanna talk about baby killers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How about that opoid crisis? 20 million painkillers to a town of 3,000. ALL CASH. https://www.npr.org/sections/t...
Also...the anonymity isn't crypto's main feature. Just look at the most recent $10 Billion lawsuit. It turns out all those rich list addresses were owned by exchanges and things like that. Cash is far more anonymous than crypto. Why else would drug dealers have bedrooms full of billions of cash: https://www.veteranstoday.com/...
So please tell me how Crypto is killing fucking babies again. I dare you.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
Is this some new definition for "direct"?
Money and every single other form of wealth have produced massive deaths slavery and innocent's deaths, Bitcoin is that exposes wealth and money as the fraud it is, anyone can make it's own currency based in anything and with enough commercial connections can make it usable, we can see currency do not have to be backed by real resources and even debt can be traded as a regular commodity.
"more evil than cash"
1. that's a pretty high bar... cf Timothy 6:10. Actually, how does one manage to be more evil than the root of all evil?
2. oh that's bloody great, now the Church of Satan has to come out with yet another crypto-coin. Thanks.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
All Wars Are Bankers' Wars https://youtu.be/5hfEBupAeo4
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
You are absolutely right - but even on /., many people seem to have forgotten the misery that Gates brought upon mankind, both out of (sometimes illegal) greedy business practices and out of pure negligence.
Bill believing crypto-currencies to be "anonymous" is just one more proof of him being detached from reality. Crypto-currencies are as transparent as could be - and people will be convicted for crimes they committed decades ago, due to the block-chains preserving the evidence forever.
I hate when people can't distinguish 'cause' from 'enable'.
Someone used Windows with Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Outlook to send a message to a killer with promise of money and a target. Someone has had installed Windows on Submarine equipped with god knows what. Now suddenly Messiah is concerned with crypto currency.
Here is the guy raping your privacy, destroying the morals of your society, telling you that nobodies in the corner are the bigger threat. We are in the midst of an evolutionary speciation event. Those with courage, intelligence, and wisdom splitting from those selected for blind, all-consuming greed (plutocrats) and their cowing, mindless, rootless slaves.
I am seriously frustrated that some non-informative blabber from grandpa Gates is published on Slashdot, while even exciting new IT research results like the one linked here do not qualify for publication.
Does Bill sponsor Slashdot for citing him so often?
billg is right about this, but most of the harm is only to Americans and Canadians who have shortened their lifespans due to said pharmaceuticals, and to a lesser extent those who died as the result of oil and coal exploration, extraction, processing, and shipping to provide the electricity to generate them.
On a global scale, these "epidemics" are mostly reduced.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When you buy a gun and kill someone, no one says "OH MY GOD, US DOLLARS KILLED HIM."
That is not "Direct" harm. That is not even secondary harm. That is very, very, very indirect harm. Tertiary at best.
The shooter and the gun 'directly' caused the harm. The secondary cause might be the drug sales or whatever made you mad enough to kill him.
The stuff you used to buy the weapon? That's at best tertiary. Not a direct cause.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Microsoft creates a cryptocurrency called BillBucks. This new cryptocurrency will solve all the outstanding problems and introduce a new feature: the blue creen of debt.
Bill believing crypto-currencies to be "anonymous" is just one more proof of him being detached from reality. Crypto-currencies are as transparent as could be - and people will be convicted for crimes they committed decades ago, due to the block-chains preserving the evidence forever.
They're not inherently anonymous, but they can be anonymous if you can keep your wallet and all transactions made separated from anything that personally identifies you. Easier said than done, naturally, but those using them for nefarious purposes are motivated to do so and seem to have reasonable success.
He was obviously a "good" businessman (as in made a lot of money and dealt with a lot of competitors) and he had some technical chops early on, but what makes Gates an expert on much *now*?
I'm not even sure he has more than just a slightly better-informed opinion on many things anymore.
it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way.
Bill, this is gunpowder. Gunpowder, Bill.
Every end has half a stick.
1980's rich person from a wealthy family has issues with new money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And how many deaths has Windows called?
How many BSODs causing ACTUAL DEATHS?!?
Or, he's just bashing a currency medium that the elite are having difficulty wrapping their tentacles around.
The stupid are unlikely to get directly involved in BTC, it's just too complicated. Easier to buy Oxy off the local contact.
I didn't expect anything else: the guy who most benefits from the current finantial system bashing a trending, actually revolutionary. It is quite shameful to see him resort to such a low blow. It's like saying: "hey, 20 people died making this humongous undersea tunnel", without acknowledging the bridge prevents 200 deaths a year out of whatever the fuck they did to cross the straight before.
Seriously, this guy has been the top richest dude, in the world, for 18 out of the last 23 years. He has - wait scratch that -
him and his next 10 generations have absolutely no say in the matter of "what is fairer than what we have now?". Fairness is seriously not something at play here.
I assume he and everybody else know Microsoft has surely caused deaths in a fairly direct way as much as any cryptocurrency, and just like crypto, none of them were part of the plan. Obviously not as direct as, say Smith and Wesson, Heckler and Koch, Lockheed Martin or any so-called "defense"-related company, but even those have their own sorry excuses for liability.
But screw "fairly" - you know what causes human death in a very fucking objectively direct way? Other humans. And maybe old age and disease and natural disaster. Now go get an actually decent argument to bash crypto, you know, like common people have to do when they want to make a point instead of using that odd "I am so popular I can say anything" falacy.
as a criminal your goal is to do crime big enough to live well but small enough that the authorities moves onto easier targets.
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"Bitcoin is easy!"
Pretty much every technology killed some people in some way. Electricity caused many deaths, and the wheel, and fire. Even medicine kills on a regular basis.
A company making helicopters even use this argument in their communication. They proudly say that helicopters saved more lives than they took. They don't deny that helicopters kill, they just say that they make up for it by saving others during search-and-rescue missions.
The argument works in reverse. One could argue that the atomic bomb saved lives by ending war early. In the case of bitcoin and drugs, drugs found on the deep web are supposedly of better quality than these found on the street, and then preventing deaths from bad products. I don't know if it is true but it shows that the exact same argument can be used both ways.
No but he is definitely a lot more worried about being kidnapped than the rest of us.
I dare anyone to kidnap me for ransom, ha! They aren't getting much.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You don't know what Monero is then do you?
Ya.. I'm old.
Yes. Every currency has blood on it. How many have been murdered for the cash in their wallets? Time to ban money entirely.
I want to point out that bitcoin is easily traceable. Once the transaction is converted to cash, you can find out the entire chain. It isn't designed to be anonymous, and it's not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It is the kidnappers that are worried that nobody would want him back.
. I can cite military Navy vessels being sank due to improperly applied Windows 2000 patches.
Bull Fucking Shit!. Name one.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
but will buy online. A drug dealer could be a cop, or a junkie looking for someone to mug. An anonymous online transaction is safe, and if you're reasonable well to do in a blue state (or very well to do in a red one) it's essentially legal. You won't even got a slap on the wrist.
There are _lots_ of folks looking for pain meds because our healthcare system is so fucked up. Some of them need the meds to manage cronic pain, some of them need them because they have treatable conditions they can't afford to treat. A lot of them are (to be frank) middle class whites unlikely to be punished for having a gram of heroine. Why risk the poor neighborhood if you don't have to?
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to buy a gun illegally, and as a result of that people who normally couldn't get guns (like criminals, violent spouses and the severely mentally ill) do, then yeah, you probably do have a case to make against them.
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I rode my motorcycle to lunch today. Now *there* is a technology that has caused a lot of deaths in a fairly direct way.
Ban motorcycles now!!!1!!!!!1!!3!!! Who will think of the childrens?!?!?!555!!??!
As if M$ hasn't caused deaths. Almost anything causes deaths. Death by sheer desperation is one of the cruelest ways to go.
Oh non existing deity! Why do we still have to reboot Windows 10 almost daily to have patches installed? Why so many meaningless updates on Skype since M$ took over? And always when I actually want to use the bloody thing!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
doesnt it bother anyone that tons of energy get wasted to calculate this crap ?
No, they are worried he'll sell them Windows.
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
They're not inherently anonymous, but they can be anonymous if you can keep your wallet and all transactions made separated from anything that personally identifies you. Easier said than done, naturally, but those using them for nefarious purposes are motivated to do so and seem to have reasonable success.
Yes, you could be anonymous if the only single usage you do of crypto currency would be shifting numerical values around between crypto-wallet.
Then yes, you could be even exchanging BTCs with known terrorists, child porno graphers, etc. and never be found out by the government.
But usually, the point of making transactions with other parties is that you want not only value shifting wallets, but also obtain something for it :
You'd like to buy arms from an illegal arm dealer, you'd like to receive drugs, etc.
At that point there's a transaction happening on some block chain, that will be couple to some real-world event (some illegal packets getting shipped to your drop-off address).
At that point, a sufficiently motivated entity with enough ressources (basically, government-level entity) can manage to eventually track down the chain of event and de-anonymize you.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Diamonds can be useful too
...and the industry has evntually found a way to produce what it needs artificially at a much lower price than the crazy market.
it's just that most of their value (or perceived value, at least) is in their being a status symbol.
...and for some weird reasons, most of the people have been conditionned to see the status symbol only if that peculiar piece of diamond happens to have been dug out of the ground, despite having all the same atoms in the same position as what the industry grows in labs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I have come fairly-directly close to topping myself with the frustration of installing Windows before now.
it's that it's harder to trace. In theory if you can keep your name from being associated with your wallet it's impossible to trace. But it doesn't need to be impossible. A locked car is harder to steal, not impossible to steal.
A car with doors welded shut would be close to impossible to steal.
But eventually, for a car to be more useful than a giant paper weight, you need to be able to enter it and drive it.
so instead you settle for merely locking door, which makes stealing the car deginitely possible.
Using crypto-wallet exclusively for shifting numbers between them would be pretty much impossible to trace.
But eventually, for crypto-currencies to be more useful that a cryptographer play toay, you need to be able to order good delivered.
So instead you settle for merely pseudonymity, knowing that a big player (government-level) will eventuall manage to make a link between your transaction in the blockchain and the drop-off points you ordered delivery too, getting step by step closer to de-anonymise you.
The main advantage of crypto currency protocol is no anonymity (they are merely pseudonymous).
The main advantage is (theoretical) absence of central authority.
Just like you can hand out cash in person to anyone,
crypto currencies enable you to send cryptocoin to anyone online without there being some "Bitcoin Inc" that can unilaterally decide to block your transaction or freeze your account (unlike credit cards).
everyone can see it on the block chain (That the whole idea behind distributed trust), but there's no single entity that can prevent you.
(Well, in Theory. In practice, some large mining pools are dangerously close to becoming some kind of central authority).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Or by investing in corporations which are killing the very people they claim to be saving.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, that's bollocks. You can't name any such vessels and if you could, Gates wasn't the one improperly applying the patches.
Furthermore, the NSA could equally have saved more lives than were lost by spying on Windows computers. You don't know because they don't tell you such things.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Name one.
The U.S.S. Montana. Windows decided to reboot my machine while I was in the middle of a battle in World of Warships.
You have my condolences on your loss. Should have been playing World of Tanks, then your ass wouldn't have gotten sunk.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.