Saudi Arabia's richest prince: JPMorgan Chase CEO is right, Bitcoin will collapse

In a land of princes and billionaires, Alwaleed bin Talal is the richest of them all. He is the grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder, Abdulaziz al-Aziz. He ranks as the 45th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. Through his venture capital firm Kingdom Holding Co., he owns shares in a variety of companies, including Lyft, Twitter, Citigroup and even London's Savoy Hotel.

He built his reputation in the investment field by investing in technology companies Twitter and AOL early, but it seems that he missed the Bitcoin luxury car. He was previously accused of deliberately exaggerating his wealth in order to enter the Forbes top 10 richest list and was embroiled in controversy.

Agree with Jamie Dimon

Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box, the prince said:

“I don’t believe in this Bitcoin thing. I think it’s going to crash sooner or later. I think we’re seeing an Enron rerun.”

Despite his reputation as an early observer of new and successful technology trends, the prince said the lack of a centralized authority is why Bitcoin will definitely fail. His views are very similar to those of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who has previously called Bitcoin a fraud and said it will eventually be destroyed by governments.

“Bitcoin just doesn’t make sense. It’s not overseen by the Federal Reserve or any other central bank. I don’t trust it at all. I agree with Jamie Dimon.”

Why is it the “Enron incident”?

The Enron incident is a textbook example of fraud - Enron used accounting loopholes to mislead investors, while auditors condoned the company's management style and its board of directors was oblivious to the mistakes of the company's managers and executives. The result of this systematic fraud was the bankruptcy of Enron and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the top five auditing firms in the world at the time.

But a fraudulent company and a decentralized currency have little in common, and the prince apparently believes that the price of Bitcoin will collapse, just as Enron stock collapsed from $90 to less than $1.