Bitcoin took heat at the World Economic Forum. The non-profit organization whose mission is to “improve the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas” had its annual meeting at Davos this week.

Critiques of Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency was front and center at the meeting this year. While business and financial leaders commended Blockchain, they criticized Bitcoin harshly.

For instance, Stephen Poloz, representing the Bank of Canada said, “There is no intrinsic value for something like bitcoin so it’s not really an asset one can analyze. It’s just essentially speculative or gambling.” Others had concerns about Bitcoins use by criminals. Christine Legarde, managing director of the IMF stated that “the fact the anonymity, the lack of transparency and the way in which it conceals and protects money laundering and financing of terrorism and all sorts of dark trades is just not acceptable.” In general, people showed concern for the currency’s instability.

In Defense of Bitcoin

The rough start Bitcoin experienced in January did not help the popular cryptocurrency’s cause. Still, supporters of Bitcoin pushed back against the criticism.

Speaking on behalf of Fabric Ventures, Richard Muirhead said, “We are still not in the kind of dotcom bubble territory in terms of the overall market capitalization.” Nicolas Cary, co-founder of Blockchain.info agreed: “You have to look at the fundamentals. To us, we are seeing increases in transaction volume and to me that’s one of the first indicators that more people are using this in their daily lives and that’s really interesting to me.” Fans of Bitcoin do not think the digital currency giant is going anywhere, and expect the currency to become a more entrenched part of the global economy as the popularity of Bitcoin continues to grow.