Enron Prophet Chanos: Bitcoin ‘Fraud Cycle’ Is ‘Speculation Masquerading as Breakthrough’
On June 4th, Hedge fund mogul Jim Chanos claimed that Bitcoin was “Masquerading as a technological breakthrough” in an interview with Bloomberg. Chanos said that in case of a worldwide crisis, it would be “better” to have food or a government-backed (fiat) money.
Addressing the Institute for New Economic Thinking and quoted by different media outlets, Chanos, who a year ago expressed he didn’t comprehend Bitcoin or blockchain innovation, issued obvious alerts about cryptocurrency investment.
“We’re now nine years into this bull market, same as the ’90s, so I suspect that now things are starting to percolate,” he told Bloomberg. He additionally called the previous year’s expanded public interest for Bitcoin as part of the “fraud cycle,” including: “This is simply a security speculation game masquerading as a technological breakthrough in monetary policy.”
Chanos included that in case of a worldwide crisis, governments would step in with fiat currency as moneylenders of last resort, a choice inaccessible to cryptocurrency, given its decentralized nature: “For those who believe that you need to own digital currency as a store of value in the worst-case scenario, that’s exactly the case in which a digital currency will work the least. The last thing I’d want to own is Bitcoin if the grid goes down.”
The notable short-dealer, who anticipated the fall of Enron, joins a regularly diminishing pool of unflinching Bitcoin naysayers.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who in December 2017 revealed to Bloomberg that Bitcoin “isn’t for him,” has since directed an approach of expanding exposure to crypto resources.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet and VP Charlie Munger also focused on denouncing Bitcoin investment in progressively peculiar language, with Munger most recently comparing crypto exchanging with managing in “freshly harvested baby brains” a month ago.
