TIME100 Summit 2022 Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME

The financial concept that even overpriced assets can make money if you find a bigger idiot to sell them to has been dismissed by Bill Gates.

Gates said he preferred investing in assets with tangible outputs, such as farms or factories, and that he had no position in cryptocurrencies or NFTs. I have nothing to do with that. Gates suggested that he was also suspicious of assets designed to avoid taxation or any sort of government rules.

Gates joked that expensive digital images of monkeys would improve the world immensely.

Gates has been skeptical about Cryptocurrencies before. In an interview from February 2021, he worried about the dangers of regular investors buying into Bitcoin, especially when the value was so volatile and could be tanked.

Gates said people get bought into manias if they don't have enough money to spare. If you don't have a lot of money than you should watch out.

Gates' warnings were correct. In April of that year, the price of the virtual currency reached a peak of $63,000. It reached an all-time high of more than $64,000 in November.

At the time of writing, the price of the virtual currency is just above $20,000. The collapse of Terra in May and the failure of Celsius are part of a larger set of convulsions.

Prices for NFTs have fallen as well. The Bored Ape Yacht Club has more than halved in value. Buyers seek to snap up digital assets at rock- bottom prices as trading volume increases. They may subscribe to the theory that there are more idiots out there if they can only find them.