Bill Gates

Two days after Buffett squared his rat poison, and in the same crowded week of dismissals, Bill Gates took his turn. On 7 May 2018, on CNBC's Squawk Box, the Microsoft co-founder reached for the oldest name in the bubble lexicon: “It's kind of a pure ‘greater fool theory’ type of investment.” Bitcoin sat near US$9,400.

The greater fool theory is the polite, almost academic way of saying the quiet part: that a thing is worth nothing in itself, and you only buy it because you expect to find someone dumber to sell it to. It is the framework you reach for when you want to call something a confidence game without quite calling it a scam. Gates, who once wrote the software the modern office runs on, was applying a software-architect's instinct — show me what this thing actually does — and finding nothing underneath.

He did not stop at theory. He added that he'd take the other side if he could: “I would short it if there was an easy way to do it.” That is the strongest version of a bearish call — not merely declining to buy, but wishing aloud for a mechanism to bet against it. He never found his easy way; the number at the top of this page went on climbing without him.

That number is what Bitcoin did after he called its buyers fools. It is a fact about the asset and nothing more — Gates put no money on either side of it. The theory he named is not, strictly, disproven by a rising price; a greater-fool market can run for years before it finds the last fool, and reasonable people still argue about which chapter we're in. But the chart has been remarkably patient about producing greater fools, and the Bureau files Gates's verdict alongside the count, and lets the reader hold both at once.