Larry Fink, CEO of the investment management company BlackRock, hammered bitcoin on Friday.
“Bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world,” Fink said at the Institute of International Finance on Friday. “It’s an index of money laundering. That’s all it is.”
Fink joins JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon in his disdain for the cryptocurrency. Dimon, who had previously compared bitcoin’s rise to the tulip boom and subsequent crash in the 17th century, took shots at bitcoin again on Friday.
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“If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day,” Dimon said.
Dimon had previously said that any J.P. Morgan trader caught trading bitcoins would be “fired in a second.”
The digital currency hit its all-time high of $5,856 per coin Thursday and is currently valued at around $5,400 a coin. Its value has increased by over 450 percent in the past year.
Others in the finance community on Wall Street and Silicon Valley disagree with Dimon and Fink’s assessments. Legendary investor Bill Miller and Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, say they own bitcoin.
Silicon Valley venture capital gatekeeper Marc Andreessen is also bullish on the currency, saying that he believes it will one day be seen in the same way as the internet.