We agree again!
When I first read where Gates said crypto-currencies were killing people I just registered it as yet more fear mongering from "those who must be obeyed".
Bankers, lawyers, politicians and real estate folks are terrified of blockchain tech as it will eventually either put them out of business or make them honest.
As a broken down old code cutter I see that distributed decentralized blockchains go against the tech giants promoting cloud computing. They want to use centralized cloud computing to turn computing into a utility like we did to electricity over a century ago.
Both Google & Microsoft want us to rent our software rather than own it. It's the only way they can suck more money out of guys like me who are perfectly happy to continue using Office 2003. They are finding that most users just do not need more and more advanced word processing. So they took a page from the utility companies.
We are seeing that the experiment of centralized power utilities is detrimental to the environment and more costly to the users than if we would develop alternative energies cheap enough for individual users to run generate their own electricity. Our current solar technology makes this possible but our current politicians are hindering it's development.
But I digress.
All this talk by guys like Gates is an effort to maintain a centralized control over computing, banking and yes even governance.
Absolutely, yes - it is, as with everything they do, part of the intention to maintain artificial power hierarchies, with themselves and their 'club' at the top of them.