Investors in the United States are beginning to see bitcoin as a store of value, says former Uber staff Dan Held.

The Interchange co-founder and director of business development credited Facebook for upping the status of cryptocurrencies. He said in an interview to BlockTV that the social media giant’s foray into the cryptocurrency industry with the introduction of its payment service project Calibra brought bitcoin to further limelight, adding:

“If someone were to tell me seven years ago that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary, and the President were all going to talk about bitcoin publicly within seven days I would have been extremely excited.”

Powell Validated Bitcoin as Store of Value

Held stressed that investment banks and asset managers like himself were already looking into bitcoin for its potential to act as a risk-off asset in turbulent times. The freshly escalated trade tensions between the US and China upped investors’ interest in the “safe-haven” cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s Calibra helped to take the conversation mainstream.

At last week’s congressional meet, Fed chair Jerome Powell compared bitcoin to “a speculative store of value” on the sidelines of a discussion that concerned Calibra.

“This is huge,” Held added. “It is a glowing endorsement from one of the most powerful people in the world that bitcoin’s use as a store of value is legitimate.”

"If someone were to tell me seven years ago that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary and the President were all going to talk about bitcoin publicly within seven days I would have been extremely excited." – @danheld. Full segment: https://t.co/p9PSx03lXt pic.twitter.com/9LlB1Od0L6 — BLOCKTV (@BLOCKTVnews) July 16, 2019

The comments closely followed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s press address at the White House on Monday. The former investment banker branded cryptocurrencies as a “national security issue” for being instrumental in the running of billions of dollars worth of criminal rackets.

Bitcoin is Bullish Long-Term

The White House’s open dislike towards bitcoin sent the market down by more than 16.70 percent to $9,230 as of 0200 UTC today. Nevertheless, many analysts saw a silver lining in the long-term.

Tom Robinson, the chief scientist at blockchain forensics company Elliptic, believes Mnuchin’s statements are bullish for bitcoin. He explained that the US already has a clear anti-money laundering law around cryptocurrencies. The latest comments from the White House office would merely reduce the risk of misuse of bitcoin, and as well as Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency.

“Firstly, like bitcoin or ethereum, Libra is based on a transparent transaction ledger,” Robinson told Forbes. “Secondly, Libra transactions will be processed by ‘validators’, which are businesses such as Mastercard and Uber. Libra transactions will only be processed if a majority of the validators agree to do so.”

Noted economist Nouriel Roubini, who is also a staunch bitcoin critic, meanwhile suggested that the cryptocurrency’s wild price swings prove it is a joke in long-term.