Computer programmer John McAfee told Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan to value Bitcoin and the work that goes into making the virtual currency.
Speaking to CNBC Fast Money on Wednesday, he rebutted Dimon’s earlier claims that Bitcoin was a fraud that would eventually blow up.
“It’s just not a real thing, eventually it will be closed,” Dimon said at the Delivering Alpha conference on Tuesday.
McAfee, whose company MGT Capital Investments mines Bitcoin, said that the miners invest heavily in supercomputing power and electricity to create Bitcoins, giving it value.
“You called bitcoin a fraud,” McAfee told CNBC. “I’m a bitcoin miner. We create bitcoins. It costs over $1,000 per coin to create a bitcoin. What does it cost to create a U.S. dollar? Which one is the fraud? Because it costs whatever the paper costs, but it costs me and other miners over $1,000 per coin. It’s called proof of work.
“Sure it will rise and fall as all new technologies are. But at the same time, it is certainly not a fraud,” he said.
Earlier in the year, McAfee made a coarse bet about what he would do if Bitcoin was not worth $500,000 in three years.