The big names who are backing and slamming bitcoin

As prices for the cryptocurrency skyrocket, investors and pundits are increasingly taking sides Is bitcoin a legitimate asset, or a super-bubble waiting to implode? As prices for the cryptocurrency skyrocket, investors and pundits are increasingly taking sides.

The backers

- The digital currency’s evangelists are led by Roger Ver, known in the industry as “Bitcoin Jesus.” Ver remains optimistic about bitcoin’s sustainability amid attempts from governments like China to curb some of the more speculative elements of trading. “The only way to stop (bitcoin) is to turn off the entire Internet in the entire world and keep it turned off,” he said in a September interview with Bloomberg News.

- Some countries are jumping on the bitcoin bandwagon, with Argentina’s most important futures market considering offering services to investors in digital currencies, while Turkish Central Bank Governor Murat Cetinkaya said digital currencies may contribute to financial stability if designed well.

- Ronnie Moas, who for the past 13 years has made more than 900 stock recommendations via his one-man show at Standpoint Research, upped his 2018 price forecast to $11,000 from $7,500 on Friday. He maintained his $50,000 target for 2027, though he said it was conservative.

The Detractors

- Severin Cabannes, deputy chief executive officer at Societe Generale SA, was the latest big bank official to weigh in, saying that “Bitcoin today is in my view very clearly in a bubble,” in a Bloomberg Television interview Friday.

- Speculation around bitcoin is the “very definition of a bubble,” Credit Suisse Group AG CEO Tidjane Thiam told reporters in Zurich on Thursday. “The only reason today to buy or sell bitcoin is to make money,” and such speculation “has rarely led to a happy end,”
Thiam said.

- Themis Trading LLC raised a red flag this week after CME Group Inc. announced plans to introduce bitcoin futures, saying the world’s largest exchange owner appeared to have “caved in” to pressure from clients. “A bitcoin future would be placing a seal of approval around a very risky, unregulated instrument that has a history of fraud and manipulation,” the firm said in a blog post.

- JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon remains one of Wall Street’s most strident bitcoin opponents, saying in October that people who buy the currency are “stupid” and that governments will eventually crush it.