Investor defends cryptocurrency in a series of tweets after 72-hour price drop happened over the weekend.

Bitcoin enthusiasts flocked to the Twitter airwaves Monday to defend the technology after two major events over the weekend continued to cast doubt over the cryptocurrency's long-term viability, at least in some mainstream circles.

The more serious event occurred Sunday when U.K.-based exchange Bitstamp suspended operations because it had reason to believe it was compromised. The company has not revealed the exact issue, but asked users to stop making deposits because they would not be honored.

"On January 4th, some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC [worth $5 million]," the company said in a statement. "Upon learning of the breach, we immediately notified all customers that they should no longer make deposits to previously issued bitcoin deposit addresses. As an additional security measure, we suspended our systems while we fully investigate the incident and actively engage with law enforcement officials."

Meantime, the value of a single bitcoin dropped almost 20 percent in a 72-hour period between Friday and Monday. A single bitcoin’s value was $311.5 on Friday, but plummeted to $257.61 on Sunday. Bitcoin has since rallied to hover near $270.

Bitcoin's value descent from near $1,300 in late 2013 to today's price was the subject of many articles that dubbed the virtual currency the worst investment of 2014. It performed even worse than Russia's battered ruble. Bitcoin enthusiasts, however, continue to illustrate why there is too much focus on the currency's day-to-day value.

Marc Andreessen, who can claim the title as bitcoin's top proponent, fired off a series of tweets Monday afternoon about bitcoin’s recent cliff dive and said the currency's critics miss the larger picture.

5/Same class of critics slamming BTC for price falling in 2014 were slamming BTC for price rising in 2013. Only consistency is the slamming. — Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) January 5, 2015

"Further, the critique that BTC is bad because it was down in 2014 changes completely if one uses a two-year window instead of one-year window," he continued. "BTC was below $14 in Jan 2013. If one-year performance has been disappointing, two-year performance has been spectacular."

Andreessen also addressed the critique that bitcoin is too volatile for consumers to use it as a store of value.

"This is largely correct at the moment, and yet misses most of the point of Bitcoin as a distributed transaction and trust network," he tweeted. "Bitcoin was specifically designed to use speculation early on to overcome the normal chicken/egg bootstrapping problem for new networks."

Andreessen referenced an editorial he wrote last year for the New York Times in which he identified many use cases for bitcoin, many of which others have trumpeted throughout 2014.

During a panel discussion at Networld Media Group's ATM & Mobile Innovation Summit, executives spoke about the advantages bitcoin has over the current banking system. One of those benefits includes a much faster funds-transfer mechanism that costs pennies to use, which should be attractive to financially underserved consumers.

"The price of BTC has very little to do with the level of creativity of thinking that's going into new bitcoin apps, or their usefulness," Andreessen said.

To date, Andreessen has invested more than $50 million in bitcoin-related companies through venture capital firms. This recent bitcoin defense should come as no surprise, but it does highlight continued misconceptions about the cryptocurrency from mainstream media outlets and bank executives.

Bitcoin's most vocal supports will tell you the virtual currency's intent was never for it to be invested in like a stock. It was created for commerce and as a way to bypass a financial system that does more harm than good in the eyes of its users. To view bitcoin and its alternatives in any other way is missing main idea of the story, those supporters say.

"The entire Bitcoin system is 6-years old," Andreessen said. "TCP/IP was 6-years old in 1981. Big things take time. Onward!"

Photo courtesy of Joi Ito.