Bitcoin

So my initial bottom line is that I see no reason why Bitcoin can’t be a currency … But I still don’t feel like putting my money into it, because I consider it a speculative bubble. I'm willing to be proved wrong.

“It’s a fraud.” If a JPMorgan trader began trading in Bitcoin “I'd fire them in a second. For two reasons: It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.

China doesn’t recognize cryptocurrency as payment and forbids ICOs … Our views are absolutely similar. In our view, it's a sort of a financial pyramid that may collapse at any moment.

Bitcoin is a sort of tulip. It’s indeed an instrument of speculation for those that want to bet on something that can go up and down 50 or 40 percent in a few days but certainly not a currency, and certainly we don’t see it as a threat to central banking or monetary policy, that’s for sure.

This is going to be the largest bubble of our lifetimes … Prices are going to get way ahead of where they should be. You can make a whole lot of money on the way up, and we plan on it.

Bitcoin is “certainly something more than just a fad ... The concept of anonymous currency is a very interesting concept -- interesting for the privacy protections it gives people, interesting because what it says to the central-banking system about controlling that.”

It's very much speculative. People are thinking, ‘Can I sell it at a higher price?‘ so it's a bubble ... With Bitcoin, you can’t make much transactions in it and you can’t spend it very easily. It's not an effective store-hold of wealth because it has volatility, unlike gold.

“Not so long ago, some experts argued that personal computers would never be adopted and that tablets would only be used as expensive coffee trays. So I think it may not be wise to dismiss virtual currencies.” Countries with “weak institutions and unstable national currencies” may see growing use.

Bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world.

Bitcoin's “value is a function of supply and demand; it doesn't really do anything else … Blockchain is a great platform for future applications.”

I think it will be an asset class that will work over time. I’m not sure how to value it yet, I really have no idea ... I think there’s a digital gold rush that’s gone on. I think a whole bunch of people are going to lose a lot of money. These ICOs? You’re going to see a bunch of them go completely broke. A bunch of them are frauds, and that’s going to be problematic for all the people that just rushed in. And so I feel like it’s a bit of a mania at the moment, but I think in the long term, it’s a viable asset class.

People are more curious than really willing to invest. I don’t think there’s any meaningful desire by high net worth individuals to take big bets on this kind of phenomenon.

Bitcoin is an attempt to replace fiat currency and evade regulation and government intervention. I don’t think that’s going to be a success.

I just don’t believe in this Bitcoin thing. I think it’s just going to implode one day. I think this is Enron in the making ... It just doesn’t make sense. This thing is not regulated, it’s not under control, it’s not under the supervision of any central bank.

Bitcoin critics are “underestimating [it] … It's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments.”