The financial world is shocked by the stunning news of the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal arrest, but Bitcoin surged to another record high.
The billionaire Saudi prince, who is a Clinton Foundation donor with significant stakes in Citigroup and Twitter, was reportedly arrested on money-laundering accusations.
A total of 11 princes and 38 senior officials were arrested on corruption charges from an anti-corruption committee headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The news about the arrests and crisis in Saudi Arabia made waves all over the world. But the news likely helped Bitcoin price continue its unstoppable skyrocketing trend setting a new record high at $7,590 - although it retracted later to $7,400 levels.
The irony is that the new Bitcoin price record comes only a week after the arrested prince bin-Talal called Bitcoin "a fraud like Enron." Indeed, a week ago Alwaleed bin-Talal made headlines proclaiming that:
"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."
"It just doesn’t make sense. This thing is not regulated, it’s not under control, it’s not under the supervision" of any central bank.
See a video of the arrested Prince calling Bitcoin a fraud:
As Bloomberg reports, bin-Talal is the 50th richest person of the world netting about $19 billion. He is the founder of Kingdom Holding Co., a Riyadh-based company that has holdings in real estate, hotels (Four Seasons) and stocks in tech companies such as Apple and eBay. The Prince owns also 5% shares of Twitter, $284 million in jewelry, $225 million worth of "plane and yacht", and $120 million in "furniture and fixtures."
Nevertheless, only a week after bin-Talal called Bitcoin "a fraud", he saw himself arrested and his bank accounts frozen. And the so-called "fraud", Bitcoin, rising to new hights. Bitcoin's market cap at the moment is $125 billion, around the same as nVidia's.