I upvoted your comment, but then removed the upvote with hyperfocused decisiveness when the pure conspiracy drivel of dangerous anti-vax non-thought reared it's incredibly ugly head toward the very end. The ultra-distilled ignorance of running away from those vans is what's killing those children, not the vaccines. And while Gates himself is a "typical parasite" who may or may not have ulterior motives, the vaccines have *demonstrably* saved thousands of lives, and continue to do so. PERIOD.

The comments about the diabolically exploitative system of human domination that TNCs/Banks create and then flourish in, are incomplete, but generally correct.

The reason they dont trust the U.N. vaccines (or UN for that matter) is simply they simply dont trust westerners which I don't blame them given the history and the fact that a lot of those countries are headed by puppet brutal governments prop up by 'foreign aid' from the West(USA, France, UK, being the biggest), which keep them in power and further impoverishing the people.

I will not vaccinate myself, but I do believe vaccines will do more good than harm in the long run.

'Gates' long history of research into poverty is truly about eugenics.'
Thats the first thought that comes to my mind. Not all vaccines are bad just got to watch who and how its administered.

The traditional banking system was NOT introduced to control and monitor people, the banking system has been hijacked and now it's used as a tool to control people, one of many tools used for that purpose. As far as monitor people is concerned that's only partially true, you can still buy most items you want in hard cash should you choose to which escapes monitoring.

Actually, the central banking system WAS created to control the national governments of the world. If you want an in-depth account of the story, I've condensed Quigley's "Tragedy and Hope" to under 200 pages (just Google "Tragedy and Hope 101," the book can be read for free online). If you're in a hurry, here is a relevant quote straight from Quigley's own pen:

"The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control…able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled…by the central banks of the world acting in secret agreements…Each central bank, in the hands of men like Montagu Norman of the Bank of England (and) Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve…sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world. In each country the power of the central bank rested largely on its control of credit and money supply." -Tragedy and Hope, page 324

Everyone needs banks, the idea people want to keep their live savings under a mattress or in their phone is naive. The problem is big mega banks who were allowed to craft economic policy and gamble with customer's money. If America was made up only of small community banks and credit unions we'd all be better off.

Perhaps. But the key thing to remember here is that the more power begins to concentrate in narrow spaces, the more deep corruption is inevitable. That means that even if your scenario were the case, those small local projects would inevitably mutate into the equivalent of the TNC's we see today, who essentially behave like gargantuan, out-of-control cash cartels.

I'm sure there will be mediator technologies which can facilitate reverse transactions at some point but for now what's so hard about say, sending someone a penny first to confirm that the address is correct, text or call the receiving person and make sure they see that penny's worth of btc in their account:
"You got that satoshi? Awesome I'm sending the rest of the 5,000 dollars worth now".

Simple.

Do you know for how brainy the man thinks he is he is fucking retard, look into the money he gave to the 3rd world about 80% stayed in the western world once you read about this anything this bloke says is pure horse shit

Of course Bitcoin is not good enough for some.. It doesn't facilitate fractional reserve banking which the banks need to stay relevant and powerful. Price fluctuation is normal at this early stage of the technology.. it attracts mostly speculators. If you could compare bitcoin to something in nature, it's like a small mountain stream subjected to seasons and weather, then becoming a torrent punctuated by waterfalls and dams, and finally a huge river like the Mississippi river... it just flows relentlessly with little change..

Doesn't Bill Gates get tired of himself trying to control the 3rd world with his huge Monsanto GMO investment and pharmaceutical experimentation on the most deprived? As for bringing drinkable water you must be kidding... Go to any African village that needs it most and see for yourself... Nil, zero!

At the end of your comment you forgot to mention circumcision, yet another "good" BG has brought to, in this case, Africa... And a good for the religious culture of genital mutilation, male domestication, and the corrupt medical industry.

Its genital mutilation, on children PERIOD and there is no medical relevance for it.

That is right. And the emphasis should be put on the forced aspect of it.

The argument of "it's their children" is an insult to the circumcised adult that couldn't chose.
Of course, some people like to be insulted, like to ignore they're being insulted, and because they can't do anything they try to legitimize it so that they don't stress themselves. Stockholm Syndrome, indeed.

Do you think men should be forced to be circumcised?

Ask any merchant that accepts credit cards if they think "charge backs" are a good idea.

If merchants are suffering from a lot of charge backs then those merchants are clearly doing something wrong likely dishonest, misleading, or outright illegal.

+1 yeah I hear this all the time touted as the "strength" of BTC. Yeah a typical merchant is going to have a few bad eggs who abuse the system every once in awhile but if you are constantly getting charge backs then the problem is with you.

"Bill Gates has done a great deal of work throughout the developing world in the field of vaccinations, disease eradication, and funding clean water projects."

Except for that the utterly failed project of Capitalism that Microsoft has engaged in has caused an order of magnitude more damage than both Gate's personal wealth, and Microsoft's nearly $200 billion in holdings put together could ever make a dent in, let alone fix. I suppose Mr. Gate's intense guilt is somewhat helpful though, as it has prompted him to do some practical good (as of late) in the world today, even in the presence of a monstrously destructive system already cemented in place, ironically, with the help of corporate structures of human domination, like Microsoft.

"Bill Gates is a typical parasite" --Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus, MIT.

Still is. However, Getting these corporate monstrosities and their puppeteers to "hang themselves by their own noose" is all part of Bitcoin's long game, and I'm all for that. So keep it up with the vaccines and clean water, and keep saying semi-good things about Bitcoin, Mr. Gates. I'll support those positive aspects of him right up until the last moment when it comes time to uproot the whole exploitative system altogether. And at that time, perhaps the masses with pitchforks will remember that he did actually do some microbic good in the world and show him some leniency.

As for the "What if you send it to the wrong person" comment. Gates cannot honestly be serious here. Reversibility in transactions has demonstrably led to nothing more than MASSIVE FRAUD. And guess who winds up absorbing the the costs of that fraud? The consumer, you. If you don't want transactions to be sent to the wrong people, then MAKE SURE BEFOREHAND that the transaction destinations are correct! This isn't brain surgery. Bitcoin is more than "good enough". It's nearly perfect for all activities of this nature. The relevant roadblocks here essentially amount to ease-of-use for the end-user, and adoption. They have nothing to do with the core capabilities of the technology itself.

Irreversibility is also a catalyst for fraud. There is never a perfect solution.

No one disagrees with that there isn't a perfect solution. Just, there are better methods of dealing with fraud. I would argue that irreversibility is better because it doesn't have to mean that if consumers make a mistake, or don't get what they were promised (whether it be a product or service), that their money is just lost. Whereas, willy-nilly reversibility has shown itself to promote an environment where fraud is encouraged and allowed to flourish. The systems that could be in place to deal with consumer complaints (so as to get their money back) can serve far better than the ones that are in place right now to deal with the fraud associated with arbitrary reversibility.

Come to think of it, one might think that irreversibility actually *promotes* responsible use of money (from a consumer standpoint). Companies will be diabolical and exploitative no matter WHAT system is in place, but that is part of a much larger conversation. I know it's not perfect, just better.

Mediator technologies already exist. That's what Coinbase, BitPay and Circle are supposed to be! As for reversing a transaction, say in a marketplace, it's actually much easier than keeping money in escrow. You can use multisig services which undoubtedly the big 3 listed above will provide soon or later, if not already.

Whilst I admire Bill Gates for his achievements and philanthropy, I can't help feeling that with 1% of the worlds population owning 50% of the worlds wealth, Bill is an influential person, whom along with his colleagues could help create even better change from the bottom up, his wealth is serving no purpose gathering bank dust.

The comments on irriversability from Bill show a lack of understanding as to why Bitcoin is that way, basically it is to protect the ledger because you cannot "undo" on the blockchain. This is, actually, the same as banks and credit cards, the transactions are only reversible because the banks manually debit and credit separate transactions. A chargeback is a new debit transaction against a former credit, and it is done manually, it appears as the same transaction however it is a new transaction.

Removing banks means that any refund would have to be requested and presented by two individuals based on trust. If Bitcoin addresses are registered against an NI number or Tax Number this would also make tracking and making a claim for refund simple.

So when people complain Bitcoin has "irreversable transactions" this can easily be accomplished by implementing a low cost middle man for example that will hold digital currencies in an account, some form of middle man, particularly with commercial transactions does need to be established to formulate a protocol for "reversing" a transaction.

Hope that helps make it easier to understand Bill.

Actually the wealthiest top 64 individuals possess the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion. And the top 100 apparently could obliterate world hunger not once or twice, but 4 times over. I'm currently laying waste to a bewildered corporate-billionaire-asslicker about this very issue in another thread. He seems to believe there's no real moral problem with this. It's perfectly ok, apparently because the rich are just so awesome all around.

I see a discouragement of responsibility when I read BG's comment on irreversibility.

Third parties can resolve that issue.

How come? BTC is equivalent with cash. If you give your cash to a wrong person, how could you reverse it ? I don't get his point. BTC should never be reversible in its nature.

Under what circumstance would you give cash to the wrong person? What Gates is speaking about are things like refunds when a transaction goes wrong, this is fundamental to any monetary system and helps prevent fraud and gives the buyer peace of mind.

Under some circumstances you still could give cash to the wrong person, which I admit that's pretty rare. But let's take an example when you buy something and give a 100$ bill and need to get 20$ back. What should you do when the person doesn't want to refund you ? It's similar to an irreversible transaction. Bitcoin can do pretty much anything cash could and more while vise versa doesn't work.

Gates is crooked.

There are numerous factors holding BitCoin back, not being able to reverse a transaction is just one of them. Unfortunately speaking out about the problems facing BitCoin is considered 'trolling' by the small minded, sadly this also holds BitCoin back.

Reversibility probably needs a central authority and a trustful rather than trustless model. Think of Bitcoin as cash, now build on top of it the same kind of structures we build on top of cash for reversibility.

It's not really difficult to see how you can have credit cards with the underlying as BTC rather than cash.

How else would reversibility work if it isn't through a third party mediator?
If not, the problem is already solved, because if two parties need to reverse a payment they can just resend money back.

BG is not calling for improvement of a decentralized technology but calling for centralization of the network.

But then again if you know the company where you are sending to usally if you let know there is a problem a lot of times they can reverse themselfs so really why would you need to reverse a transaction anyway to reverse that just adds more trans fees that fiat money has.So really is that a real big excuse holding BTC back from true value just over a reversal of a transaction i think that is a very bad excuse for just reversal crasy.And if that is the case you can not reverse a transaction on fiat money after a certain time frame so what the is the problem.And they are worried about crime and what have you with btc think how many of the very same stuff is bought with fiat money but that seams to be okay because the banks get richer from trans fees but they do not get charged for excepting trans fees for the crimes that fiat money represents.Just my thought

Decentralization zealots are going to crucify me, but what about Curecoin.net as the basis of the "dream" economy. Android protein folding beta is out ... 800 million registered Android phones in the world. You can argue the system will be hacked on the Stanford Universityside, but banks get hacked every day - somehow they still survive - and new security safeguards are being developed every day. What IF every financial transaction we made benefited humanity?

That's a stellar idea. Really a no-brainer. The problem is that these coins currently have zero network effect. Btw, the calculations being performed in the Bitcoin blockchain aren't "useless", as the curecoin explanation asserts. Those calculations are there to provide security for transactions on the blockchain, so technically, they are not without utility.

That being said, if a consensus could be reached on what are the most difficult and important illnesses that need to be addressed in the world today, I would fully support a mutation of Bitcoin to replace its current mining algorithm, with one that folds for one or more heinous illnesses (like ALS, for instance).

This of course, provided that it could be done safely without causing a spectacular supernova, sending Bitcoin into oblivion. That would be a catastrophe of horrific proportions. IMAGINE having Bitcoin's 600 petahashes of math-crunching power chomping away at Alzheimer's as opposed to the current puny amounts we're throwing at it. We could start laying-waste to these awful diseases in MONTHS, as opposed to decades on end.

That would be a better project for these universities. Finding a way to swap out SHA256 in Bitcoin for something else without DISRUPTING the project into failure. Then, convincing the developers to DO IT. It's a tall order, but a worthwhile endeavor I'd say.

Agree - the calculations serve the purpose of securing the blockchain - however Satoshi never imagined the advent of ASICS (the white paper talks about is CPUs and how they keep up with Moore's law, and how the system could survive from transaction fees alone). In my mind, ASIC mining was a set back for bitcoin, rather than a boon. Science coins wouldn't necessarily destroy BTC, just help transform it into the universal exchange medium it's really good at.

There are people with the right skills asking about the underlying algoriths for FAH (GROMACS and OpenMM) to see if they can make ASICs out of them. But in my mind, ASICS introduce mining centralization on top of the centralized supply of work units from the universities. I'd like all users to be able to participate on some level - even if it just means collecting transaction fees for their low-level DCN participation.

Price fluctuation/speculation is the primary problem. And, as most people using (not speculating) bitcoin must convert in dollars/euro/yuan as soon as possible to hedge against price fluctuation, you rely on exchanges/payment-processors. Most of them are either anonymous and/or unregulated, and not being able to reverse means you need to fully trust them. Bitcoin protocol has its problems, but the biggest threats to its adoption are not technical...

One must find someone to fully trust in a Trustless System.

Bill Gates said he wants a digital "token" for farmers -- that already exists, Urocoin!

I tend to agree with his assessment , whatever supplants BTC will have to have an identity attached to the addresses to reduce the possibility of sending to the wrong place. i.e. here's Bills address and I know its Bills address because his identity it attached to that address (or many addresses) on the blockchain. Social Media will play a role here.

Canuck.

That feature could easy be added to any wallet...

I dont think so. Just an opinion tho. I dont think transactions should be reversable, I just think main stream adoption wont happen until we do away with cryptic addresses. e.g. try to get a senior to comprehend crypto, wont happen, but if you tell them they can instantly send $100 to one of their friend on Facebook via Changetip, thats a whole different story. They dont care how it works, only that its reliable and they cant scew it up. ;-) Not to mention that if you do want to stay anonymous there will always be cryptos out there for you to use.