Does not mean one has to invest in new ideas that one does not believe in. Are you seriously suggesting that Berkshire does not employ some of the best investment managers, analysts, and researchers, consultants and market professionals and that they are not on top of every innovation and products that make it to market? I am afraid you are dead wrong on this one. They have most certainly spent a multiple of time debating and thinking of all the merits and risks of cryptos than you have.
Gates actually said he wanted to short bitcoin if he could. At the time he said it there was a futures contract at the CME. The Tesla short cost him a lot including his credibility as did buying a private jet company. What is 60% of Microsoft worth? More than all the farmland in the US? He is now trying to keep COVID vaccines closed source as he does not like open source. How many people will die because of that?
And while that world-class research team has been "debating and thinking", BTC has accumulated over a trillion dollars in market value, and it got to that 1 Trillion dollars decades faster than any other asset in the history of the world ever could, including the stocks of MSFT, APPL, and AMZN.
Almost everything you said about Gates is incorrect. MS is running the biggest open source repository in the world now. With Gate's blessing. At Gates time open sourcing code at MS was an inferior strategy.
True, yet apples & oranges. Governments unlikely to let crypto markets do whatever they want, either complete ban or regulation are imminent.
I never mentioned software. Governments want the COVID vaccines open sourced to save lives. Gates want them to remain closed source so he can profit from them.