Former PayPal CEO Brands Bitcoin a ‘Cult’, Trashes Use Cases
Bitcoin believers and enthusiasts beware, you could be unwitting members of a cult if Bill Harris is to be believed.
Speaking on CNBC’s Fast Money program, the former CEO of payments services firm PayPal claimed that bitcoin’s supposed advantages are non-existent.
“The cult of bitcoin make many claims — that it’s instant, free, scalable, efficient, secure, globally accepted and useful — it is none of those things,” said Harris.
According to the founder of digital wealth management firm, Personal Capital Corporation, there already exists digital currencies which are functioning better than bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“We’ve got digital currencies. And we’ve got digital currencies that are more stable, more widely accepted and have intrinsic value. We’ve already got it — it’s called the dollar, the yen, you name it,” said Harris.
Bitcoin Bear
Additionally, Harris predicted doom and gloom for bitcoin saying that the price of the flagship cryptocurrency will go ‘a whole lot closer to zero than a lot because there is just no value there’.
Prodded further, Harris agreed that the problems that bitcoin sought to solve still exist especially with regards to making cross-border money transfers as this is currently slow and expensive. Per Harris, however, the solution isn’t cryptocurrencies but faster networks.
With regards to the volatility that the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is associated with, Harris pointed out that this fact alone makes it unviable as a payment mechanism and ‘ridiculous as a store of value’.
Doesn’t Expect History to Repeat Itself
In reference to the comparisons about the current state of cryptocurrencies and the early days of the internet when the stocks of some tech firms such as Amazon fell drastically following bearish sentiment over their future only to recover and far exceed their valuations then, Harris warned against expecting a repeat with regards to crypto.
“There are a lot of things that have increased dramatically in value. That doesn’t mean that everything is going to increase dramatically in value. There has to be something underpinning it. Bitcoin makes no revenue, no profitability,” said Harris adding that he couldn’t come up with a use case for bitcoin except in criminal activities.
Consistent Bitcoin Basher
Though he has gone a step further this time and hurled the worst possible insult for a champion of decentralization like bitcoin by calling it a cult, Harris has always been skeptical of the pioneering cryptocurrency. As previously reported by CCN.com, the former PayPal head honcho branded bitcoin the greatest scam in history in an opinion piece published in a tech publication just four months ago.
At the time, Harris said bitcoin was a never-seen-before ‘colossal pump-and-dump scheme’. Harris’ views on bitcoin, however, stand in sharp contrast to those of other PayPal alumni such as billionaire investor Peter Thiel who sees cryptocurrencies as possessing ‘great potential’.
Featured image from Youtube/TWiT Netcast Network .
