Saudi Prince Alwaleed Calls Bitcoin “Enron in the Making” as BTC Dips From $6,100 All-Time High

Bitcoin was flying high — and then a Saudi billionaire rained on the parade.

On October 23, 2017, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s most prominent investors, told CNBC that bitcoin will eventually “implode,” comparing the cryptocurrency to Enron, the infamous energy company that collapsed in 2001 after revelations of massive accounting fraud.

“I just don’t believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it’s just going to implode one day. I think this is Enron in the making,” Alwaleed said during the interview. His comments came as bitcoin’s price slipped roughly 4% from its weekend all-time high above $6,100, trading around $5,800 on Monday. According to CoinMarketCap data, bitcoin closed the day at approximately $5,930 with a total market capitalization near $98.7 billion.

TL;DR

• Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal called bitcoin “Enron in the making” on CNBC
• Bitcoin dipped 4% from its all-time high above $6,100, trading near $5,800
• BTC was still up approximately 771% over the previous 12 months and nearly 500% year-to-date
• The comments echoed JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s “fraud” characterization from September
• Saudi Arabia’s financial regulator said it was “too early” to assess bitcoin’s impact

A Royal Rebuke With Historical Precedent

Prince Alwaleed’s Enron comparison carried significant weight. The Saudi royal, often called the “Warren Buffett of the Middle East,” is the chairman of Kingdom Holding Company and has built a reputation for high-conviction investment calls. His warning echoed similar skepticism from traditional finance leaders, most notably JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who had called bitcoin a “fraud” in early September when the cryptocurrency was trading at roughly $3,800.

“This thing is not regulated, it’s not under control, it’s not under supervision,” Alwaleed emphasized during his CNBC appearance. His concerns centered on the lack of governmental oversight and the speculative nature of the cryptocurrency market, which had seen explosive growth throughout 2017.

The prince’s criticism wasn’t universally shared within Saudi Arabia’s financial establishment. Abdulmalik Al-Sheikh, a senior advisor at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), struck a more measured tone, telling CNBC on Sunday that it would take approximately five more years before regulators could properly assess bitcoin’s true impact on the global financial system.

Bitcoin Gold Fork Adds to Market Uncertainty

The price dip coincided with another significant event in the cryptocurrency world: the Bitcoin Gold hard fork. On October 23, developers took a “snapshot” of the Bitcoin blockchain at block 491,406, creating a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Gold (BTG). The fork aimed to make bitcoin mining more accessible by replacing the SHA-256 mining algorithm with Equihash, which is designed to be ASIC-resistant.

The creators of Bitcoin Gold argued that bitcoin mining had become too centralized, dominated by a small number of entities controlling expensive ASIC mining hardware. Their goal was to return to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision of “one CPU, one vote,” allowing individual miners with standard graphics cards to participate competitively.

However, the fork was met with considerable skepticism. Major exchanges including Bittrex issued official statements warning users about Bitcoin Gold, and the broader crypto community questioned whether the new cryptocurrency was simply a cash grab by its developers rather than a genuine technological improvement.

A Market Defying Its Critics

Despite the high-profile criticism, bitcoin’s performance throughout 2017 had been nothing short of extraordinary. The cryptocurrency had surged approximately 771% over the previous twelve months and was up nearly 500% year-to-date. From a market capitalization perspective, bitcoin’s near-$99 billion valuation put it on par with some of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

The rally had been fueled by a combination of factors: growing mainstream awareness of blockchain technology, a weakening U.S. dollar, increasing institutional interest, and speculative fervor driven by the prospect of multiple hard forks entitling holders to “free” new coins. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, had seen even more dramatic gains, rising more than 4,000% year-to-date to trade at approximately $287 with a market cap of $27.3 billion.

VanEck Makes Its First Major Crypto Move

While traditional finance figures like Alwaleed and Dimon were publicly skeptical, other institutional players were quietly building crypto infrastructure. On October 23, VanEck’s MarketVector division launched a series of digital assets indexes designed to track the performance of the global cryptocurrency market. The indexes, which were set with a base value of 100 as of December 31, 2014, represented one of the earliest attempts by a traditional financial services firm to create benchmark products for the digital asset space.

The launch signaled that despite the public skepticism from banking elites, the infrastructure for institutional crypto investment was beginning to take shape — a development that would prove prescient in the years to come.

Why This Matters

The events of October 23, 2017 captured the central tension of the crypto revolution: established financial titans were calling bitcoin a bubble and a fraud, while the cryptocurrency’s price action and growing institutional infrastructure told an entirely different story. Prince Alwaleed’s “Enron in the making” prediction would be tested — and ultimately proven spectacularly wrong — as bitcoin continued its historic rally toward $20,000 just two months later. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin Gold fork highlighted the growing pains of a decentralized network grappling with questions of governance, centralization, and the true meaning of Satoshi’s original vision.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.