Add Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to the roster of high-profile investors and financiers who don’t believe bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are here to stay.
“I just don’t believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it’s just going to implode one day,” Alwaleed told CNBC in an interview Monday morning. “I think this is Enron in the making.”
Bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.42% is up around 500% in 2017 and last week topped $6,000 for the first time. Bitcoin was down 1.5% at $,5813.25 in recent trade, according to Coindesk.com.
Energy firm Enron collapsed in 2001 in one of the largest accounting scandals in U.S. corporate history.
From the archive: Enron workers lost everything
Alwaleed said bitcoin “doesn’t make sense. This thing is not regulated, it’s not under control, [and] it’s not under the supervision” of any central bank.
Of course, to bitcoin proponents, those same criticisms are features rather than bugs.
Read: What one strategist sees taking bitcoin ‘into the stratosphere’
Alwaleed has plenty of company among bitcoin doubters. Alwaleed said he agreed with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.04% Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, who last month likened bitcoin to the 17th century tulip mania, an early market bubble, and branded cryptocurrencies a “fraud” that would eventually implode.
And billionaire investor Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, last month said cryptocurrencies like bitcoin met his firm’s criteria for a market bubble.
Not all big-shot financiers are cryptocurrency skeptics, however. Morgan Stanley Chief Executive James Gorman last month said the phenomenon was “more than just a fad.”
Read: ‘Fraud.’ ‘More than a fad.’ The words Wall Street CEOs are using to describe bitcoin
In the wide-ranging interview, the prince also argued that shares of Citigroup Inc. C, +0.04% remain undervalued. “There’s still plenty of room for Citigroup to go above $100 right now,” he told the cable news channel. Citigroup shares are up 49% in the last 12 months and were trading at $73.73 on Monday, a rise of 0.3%. Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holdings is a major investor in Citigroup.