Bill Fleckenstein Bloomberg TV Last week, Bank of America Merrill Lynch initiated coverage on Bitcoin and estimated a fair value of $1,300 on the digital currency.

Despite this extraordinary endorsement, many aren't yet willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of Bitcoin.

Here's what Bill Fleckenstein told Eric King of King World News:

Yeah, it’s a giant chain-letter. Everyone will lose all of their money that puts money in it. It’s a complete joke. Even a crappy currency has government taxing ability behind it, or some sort of a standing army or something like that.

Bitcoin is nothing. It’s dot-com mania 3.0 just moved one step over, right? People are so enamored with communication with their phones and online commerce and all of that. Now they’ve invented what they call a currency to mess around with it, and people are speculating in it the same way they speculated in this other crap. It’s not a currency at all, it’s a complete joke.

Fleckenstein has been one of the most vocal critics of the Federal Reserve and its aggressive monetary policy. And for the most part, Fed critics have been somewhat understanding of the Bitcoin phenomenon because it acts as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. That's what makes Fleckenstein's denouncement of Bitcoin particularly powerful.

