Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has called time on bitcoin, saying that it has failed as a currency.
In a Q&A session follwing a speech on leadership to students at London's Regent University, Carney said of bitcoin: “It has pretty much failed thus far on ... the traditional aspects of money. It is not a store of value because it is all over the map. Nobody uses it as a medium of exchange."
His sentiments echo those of payment processor Stripe, which has dropped its support for bictoin saying that crazy price fluctuations and higher fees render the cryptocurrency unusable as a form of payment.
Such views are becoming common currency in financial markets. UBS Wealth Management chief economist Paul Donovan recently remarked: "A currency has to be a widely used medium of exchange. Cryptocurrencies are never going to achieve that. Period."
Warren Buffett, arguably the world's most successful and respected investor, has also issued a scathing assessment of cryptocurrencies and predicted a "bad ending" for the current bitcoin boom.
"I can say almost with certainty that cryptocurrencies will come to a bad end,” said Buffet in an interview with US TV channel CNBC. "When it happens or how or anything else, I don't know," he added.