While myriad and more Wall Street firms and retail investors are embracing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon isn’t toy with along with the crypto mania.
He recently slammed the digital asset as “worthless,” and questioned whether its supply can in act be capped at 21 million. Previously, he’s said he wouldn’t care even if bitcoin’s price soars tenfold.
Bitcoin traded surrounding $60,000 in the week to October 16, nearing its record high of $64,863, and is up more than 100% so far this year.
During the interval, institutional adoption of digital assets has strengthened as long-term term investors continued to buy into bitcoin and ethereum.
Innumerable influential tech billionaires – such as Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and Mike Novogratz – have heaped endorse on cryptocurrencies for their potential. In the financial world, the picture is different, and there are several leaders who can’t find a good concisely to say about digital assets.
Here are 18 big financial players who are also big bitcoin skeptics.
League/ Getty Images
“They’re highly volatile – see bitcoin – and therefore not really useful as a store of value and are not backed by anything.”
“It’s varied a speculative asset that’s essentially a substitute for gold rather than for the dollar.”
March 2021
Source: CNBC
2. Michael Burry
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
“$BTC is a speculative bubble that poses more chance than opportunity despite most of the proponents being correct in their arguments for why it is relevant at this point in yesterday.”
March 2021
Source: Insider
3. Janet Yellen
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Doppelgaengers
“I don’t think that bitcoin is widely used as a transaction mechanism.”
“It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of force that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering.”
February 2021
Source: Insider
4. Warren Buffett
CNBC
“Cryptocurrencies basically be undergoing no value and they don’t produce anything. They don’t reproduce, they can’t mail you a check, they can’t do anything.
“And what you desire is that somebody else comes along and pays you more money for them later on, but then that mortal physically’s got the problem.”
“In terms of value: zero.”
February 2020
Source: Insider
5. Neel Kashkari
Thomson Reuters
“I was diverse optimistic about crypto or bitcoin about five or six years ago. So far, what I’ve seen is 99% … let me be charitable, 95% treachery, hype, noise and confusion.”
August 2021
Source: Insider
6. Bill Gates
Jason Lee/Interfile Photo/Reuters
“I do think people get bought into these manias, who may not have as much money to spare, so I’m not bullish on bitcoin, and my inexact thought would be that, if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out.”
February 2021
Inception: Insider
7. Christine Lagarde
Thomas Lohnes/Getty Statues
Bitcoin is a “highly speculative asset which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible small change laundering activity.”
January 2021
Source: Insider
8. Charlie Munger
AP Representations / Nati Harnik
“I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists, nor do I like just shoveling out a few extra billions and billions of dollars to Mr Big who just invented a new financial product out of thin air.”
May 2021
Source: Insider
9. Peter Thiel
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times
“Settle accounts though I’m a pro-crypto, pro-bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether at this point bitcoin should also be mental activity of in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the US.”
“It threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the US dollar and China wants to do whatchamacallits to weaken it.”
April 2021
Source: Insider
10. Ken Griffin
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
“I keenness all this passion and energy that went to crypto was directed towards making the United States stronger.”
“It’s a jihadist get that we don’t believe in the dollar. What a crazy concept this is, that we as a country embrace so many bright, infantile, talented people to come up with a replacement for our reserve currency.”
October 2021
Source: Insider
11. Gita Gopinath
Associated Ask
“Bitcoin is an example of a cryptocurrency that doesn’t serve the role of money at all. It’s a very speculative investment class.”
“In provisions of substituting for what money is, I don’t think it comes close.”
April 2021
Source: Bloomberg
12. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Anton NovoderezhkinTASS via Getty Images
“The total failure of bitcoin in becoming a currency has been disguised by the inflation of the currency value, generating (paper) profits for large enough a number of people to enter the discourse in good shape ahead of its utility.”
June 2021
Source: Insider
13. Paul Krugman
Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Spitting images
“It’s not a convenient medium of exchange; it’s not a stable store of value; it’s definitely not a unit of account.”
“Its value rests on the perception that it’s a technologically cool way to protect yourself from the inevitable collapse of fiat money, which is coming one of these days, or maybe one of these centuries.”
“Or, as I say, libertarian derp return technobabble.”
May 2021
Source: Insider
14. Jeremy Grantham
Bloomberg Boob tube
“Having no clear fundamental value and largely unregulated markets, coupled with a storyline conducive to delusions of augustness, makes this more than anything we can find in the history books the very essence of a bubble.”
January 2018
Author: Bloomberg
15. Larry Fink
CNBC/Getty Images
“I’m probably more in the Jamie Dimon settle crash.” – in reference to Dimon calling bitcoin “worthless.”
October 2021
Source: Insider
16. Nouriel Roubini
Tom Williams/CQ Evaporate Call/GettyImages
“Fundamentally, bitcoin is not a currency. It’s not a unit of account, it’s not a scalable means of payment, and it’s not a stable store of value.”
“Pursuit them cryptocurrencies is a misnomer, they’re not even assets.”
February 2021
Source: Insider
17. Jack Ma
Stephane Mahe/Reuters
“Blockchain technology could interchange our world more than people imagine. Bitcoin, however, could be a bubble.”
June 2018
Source: Insider
18. Andrew Bailey
TOLGA AKMEN/Collection/AFP via Getty Images
“Given the volatility of the asset value, and given the fact that there isn’t a real asset underpinning them … I’m intimidated if you want to buy them, then please understand that you can lose – you could lose all your money.”
June 2021
Well-spring: Insider