Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein is not a fan of bitcoin. On Thursday, he said he believed the cryptocurrency was a “vehicle for fraud” and his company has no interest in investing in it.

Blankfein (pictured) made the comments as part of an interview on Bloomberg TV, noting that he doesn’t consider the digital currency to be a store of value but added that if things change, the firm may consider investing in it. “Something that moves up and down 20 percent in a day doesn’t feel like a currency, doesn’t feel like a store of value,” Blankfein said. “If it works out — and it gets more established, and it trades more like a store of value, and it doesn’t move up and down 20 percent, and there is liquidity to it — we’ll get to it.”

Bitcoin hit a high of $11,363.99 Tuesday before plunging to $9,295.75 several hours later, although on at least one exchange the price hit a low of $8,593. The drop was primarily blamed on outages at a number of leading bitcoin exchanges, others claimed market manipulation. Christopher Grey, co-founder and chief operating officer of CapLinked Inc., told SiliconANGLE at the time that he believes that the large market fluctuations are driven by “people who are using the media to manipulate the prices of various coins for quick profits both up and down, especially because nobody is regulating or watching these markets.”

Blankfein is not the first CEO of a major financial group to criticize bitcoin. JP Morgan Chase & Co. head Jamie Dimon called it a “fraud” and people who invest in it stupid in September. Another nonfan of bitcoin is legendary investor Jack Bogle, who reportedly told an audience Tuesday that people should “avoid bitcoin like the plague” as it has “no underlying rate of return.”

Bitcoin itself remains well down on its peak and below the $10,000 mark, trading at $9,691.82 as of 11 p.m. EST.

Picture: fortunelivemedia/Flickr