Investor's Edge

Bitcoin is surging, but these experts are still skeptical

What five bearish experts have to say about bitcoin
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These experts do not like bitcoin

Bitcoin is struggling to regain the hype and rapid growth it saw during the end of 2017, and some big-name Wall Street experts and CEOs think the digital currency may have run its course.

"So you've got to understand how you got to $20,000," Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC in June. "You got to $20,000 because the base of people who truly believe in bitcoin was joined by many, many, many people who jumped on the bandwagon. That was purely speculation."

"I don't think you get all the way back to $20,000," he added.

Nicholas Colas, co founder of DataTrek Research, said in May that he's advising people not to buy bitcoin in the short term. 

"We're not seeing a lot of incremental engagement with people interested in seeing bitcoin for the first time," he said. "And like any new technology, you need new adopters to come in to make it more valuable."

Bitcoin had has a rough 2018 so far. The cryptocurrency crashed from $20,000 at the end of 2017 to under $6,000 by June. But the bitcoin faithful remains excited, and some experts see the digital currency surpassing its record highs from the end of 2017.

What five bullish experts have to say about bitcoin
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Five bullish experts on bitcoin

Chamath Palihapitiya, the CEO and founder of Social Capital, predicted on CNBC’s "Squawk Box" in December that bitcoin would be worth $1,000,000 in 20 years. In May 2018, he said bitcoin is a valuable form of insurance since it is “fundamentally not correlated” to the S&P 500 index.