The CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon has denounced the bitcoin cryptocurrency as a fraud, bound to fail.
“The currency isn’t going to work. You can’t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart,” Dimon said at a bank investor conference in New York.
The head of America’s largest bank threatened to dismiss traders if they trade the cryptocurrency.
“I would fire them in a second, for two reasons: It is against our rules, and they are stupid, and both are dangerous,” Dimon said, as quoted by Reuters.
Dimon also compared the recent bitcoin rush with the 17th сentury tulip mania, which boosted contract prices for bulbs of newly introduced tulips to extremely high levels.
The prices drastically collapsed at the beginning of 1637, making the tulip mania one of the first recorded speculative bubbles.
According to Dimon, bitcoin could be useful “if you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea.. or if you were a drug dealer or a murderer.”
READ MORE: Bitcoin price surpasses $5,000 for first time
Meanwhile, the controversial cryptocurrency has tumbled to a three-week low and is currently trading at around $3,970. Bitcoin lost a massive $1,000 in value since the beginning of September when its price was close to breaking a new record of $5,000.
Investors started selling off the cryptocurrency after reports that Chinese regulators might shut down domestic bitcoin exchanges.
The rumors started spreading after the People’s Bank of China banned initial coin offerings (ICO), outlawing the practice of creating and selling cryptocurrency to investors to finance start-up projects.