Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.’s founder and one of the world’s richest men, apparently isn’t fond of bitcoin, claiming in a somewhat bizarre Ask Me Anything session on Reddit Tuesday that cryptocurrencies kill people.

Gates was on record in 2014 as saying that bitcoin is “better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place, and of course for large transactions currency can get pretty inconvenient.” But now, he claims that cryptocurrencies kill because they are used to buy drugs anonymously online.

“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,” Gates said.

Not content with leaving it at that, Gates also said anonymity with cryptocurrencies is a bad thing as well because it encourages other types of criminal activity. “The main feature of cryptocurrencies is their anonymity. I don’t think this is a good thing,” Gates wrote. “The government’s ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing.”

Linking bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to kidnapping, Gates said that “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.”

Gates’ comments attracted widespread criticism from the cryptocurrency community, with many rightly pointing out that cash can be and is used for all the activities described by Gates.

Then again, it turns out that Gates may not be entirely against all cryptocurrencies after all. As Forbes pointed out, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a partnership with Ripple that saw both launch software in October to make it cheaper for developing countries to build financial services infrastructure. Ripple is the same company behind the Ripple XRP token, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Disclosure: The author is currently #HODL on a small amount of Ripple XRP.

Photo: roklen24