(ANTIMEDIA) It’s been an embattled year so far for Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency world in general. The start of the year saw a precipitous drop in Bitcoin value, marking somewhere around blockchain’s 250th death. Then, numerous financial institutions, government regulatory agencies, and elite moguls rubbed salt in the wounds with a series of rhetorical attacks aimed at discrediting cryptocurrency and dismissing it as a dangerous bubble. Even Facebook got a few kicks in when Zuckerberg — after seemingly pondering the efficacy of crypto in a post — banned all altcoin ICOs from advertising on the site.
Gates made the statement during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session in which he declared that the ability to conduct anonymous financial transactions is a great boon for drug dealing, financial crimes, and terrorism:
“The main feature of crypto currencies is their anonymity. I don’t think this is a good thing. The government’s ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing. Right now crypto currencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way. I think the speculative wave around ICOs and crypto currencies is super risky for those who go long.”READ MORE: http://theantimedia.org/bill-gates-cryptocurrency-killing-people/