Bitcoin investors “have no clue” and join “every crook and dirty politician” in using it, a top Visa executive says.
Visa’s chief financial officer told mainstream media he thinks Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are used by “every crook and dirty politician” March 16.
In an interview, Vasant Prabhu directly linked the assets to crime, saying that other people talking about buying and selling Bitcoin “have no clue” and are “a real shock” to him.
“With a currency issued by the Federal Reserve, I know who stands behind it,” he said. With cryptocurrency, conversely, “Who’s good for the money? Who the hell knows?”
Prabhu joins a seemingly diminishing number of major legacy finance figures decrying the merits of cryptocurrency.
Once-infamous naysayers such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon have toned down their criticism, with only Berkshire Hathaway vice-president Charlie Munger and UK Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott launching a fresh offensive against Bitcoin in the past month.
This week also saw a broadly constructive view taken by US regulators in a Congress hearing dedicated to cryptocurrency regulation. One senator, however, described Bitcoin as “harmful” and similarly suggested its main use was in criminal circles, while appearing to stop himself saying it reduced “control” of the government over the US dollar.
“It’s very hard to get dirty money through a banking system. Cryptocurrency is phenomenal for all that stuff… Every crook and every dirty politician in the world, I bet, is in cryptocurrency,” Prabhu meanwhile continued.
Visa has drawn scorn from businesses in the crypto space in recent months, being blamed by the biggest US exchange and wallet provider Coinbase for causing considerable disruption to customer payments.
