I can't speak to Bill Gates' motives, but there is the old saying "Invest in land, they aren't making more of it". Land as a store of wealth may be one of the bigger reasons.<p>(offer void in the Netherlands.)
I've learned a bit about farmland investments via <a href="https://www.acretrader.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.acretrader.com</a> recently. 690M for Gates is a small amount and is just part of a properly diversified portfolio: farmland provides steady returns on crop and some property appreciation, and is uncorrelated with many other assets.
> Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of farmland with assets totaling more than $690m<p>yeah thats not that much? keyword is private owner. bill gates is one of the wealthiest individuals on earth so of course if he puts a fraction of his net worth into land then he will become the biggest private owner because the other private owners dont have as much money as he does.<p>he is NOT the biggest land owner in the united states because there are many companies that own tons and tons of land. they just arent being compared here because they are companies, and not "private owners"
How soon before billionaires invest in digital land?<p>I remember seeing people pay hundreds of dollars for space in Ultima online for their house.<p>I wonder if humanity will ever have a platform shared by the entire world that wouldn’t be discarded every 10 years where people would actually want to invest long-term.<p>Maybe bitcoin is a type of land in that sense, it is finite and verified, and you can build on top of it?<p>Fun to think about at least.
He has a lot of money and he can be the private owner of many things. And farmland is cheap compared to penthouses in skyscrapers (he has many of those as well).
I started reading this article with great interest. But then, I got to the part where Bill Gates is "the white man". After reading the Bill Gates is "the white man", my interest dropped to about zero. I guess another garbage propaganda piece from Guardian. Why do I keep clicking on the articles from MSM?