Because this rich tech billionaire brought about humanity-changing innovations so maybe what he says deserves some attention? Why does _your_ opinion matter?

His status as rich tech billionaire doesn't make a difference unless he is making arguments that are new or interesting. And he isn't. We've all been hearing the environment argument for years now.

Plus, there is obviously an argument to be made that he has had a negative overall influence on the world & therefore shouldn't be trusted.

>> Plus, there is obviously an argument to be made that he has had a negative overall influence on the world

That is not only not obvious, but - even with his philanthropy efforts alone, the opposite would be obvious.

What is your argument for Bill Gates having a negative overall influence on the world?

I don't want to hash them out, plenty of arguments from the leftists or linux people for example. Free software, exploitation of workers. Whatever. The argument itself is arbitrary, I'm just saying that he's a controversial figure

Calling Bill Gates uninformed about anything is breathtakingly uninformed.

Just because he's a billionaire doesn't mean he has the time or interest to deep dive into all emerging technologies, or possible tech bubbles

No, just because he's a billionaire doesn't mean any of those things.

It's just that Bill Gates is legendary for the amounts he reads and his recall ability, and his contributions to many topics outside of just managing MS (state of the art algorithms, erradictinc malaria, nuclear energy etc). I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not. So you can see how funny it is when a random guy on HN says "just because he's a billionaire" :D

Fair enough. But for every bill gates we can find a mark cuban, michael saylor etc who are extremely excited about bitcoin. So I still think it is uninteresting.

Moving the goal posts.

First you said "Just because Bill Gates is a billionaire, doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about"

Now that you've learned that most likely he DOES know what he's talking about, you changed your argument to "Other people think other things, so it's uninteresting" (What? WE're not talking about random people here.)

Lets just say it: you already arrived at the conclusion you want, now you're grasping for arguments to support it.

I conceded the point that he hasn't looked into it with 'fair enough' lol. Regardless, informed is relative. I don't think Bill Gates knows more on bitcoin than I do. His status as an authority figure is uninteresting, because we can find many authority figures that disagree with him.