American economist Nouriel Roubini is one of the main critics of cryptocurrency who does not believe in the potential of blockchain technology.
Famously called Dr. Doom in the crypto world, Roubini commented on the Amazon Web Services [AWS] launching two new blockchain services announcement, calling them “centralized, permissioned and private.”
Roubini believes bitcoin is the “biggest bubble & bust in history” and calls BTC “a most toxic pseudo-asset.”
When bitcoin fell below $4,000 last week, the economist said the cryptocurrency was “on its way down to zero.”
Meet Nouriel Roubini
Nouriel Roubini is a Turkish-born American economist and educator best known for predicting the 2007–08 subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the subsequent global financial crisis.
Born in Istanbul to Iranian Jewish parents on March 29, 1958, Roubini moved with his family to Iran and Israel before they settled in Italy in 1962. After a year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he studied economics at Bocconi University in Milan (B.A., 1982) and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1988), where he specialized in macroeconomics and international economics.
He became an academic at Yale and a visiting researcher/advisor at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and Bank of Israel.
Roubini spent much of his early career studying countries that experienced extreme economic failures, such as Mexico (in 1994), Thailand and other countries associated with the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Russia (1998), and Argentina (2000). He determined that each shared one common element: a massive current account deficit.
Roubini’s website, RGE Monitor (founded in 2005), became a central source for economic analysis of the global credit crisis. In 2010 he published Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance co-written with Stephen Mihm.
By 1998, he joined the Clinton administration first as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then moved to the Treasury Department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, then the undersecretary for international affairs, who in 2009 became Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.
Roubini likes to refer to himself as a "global nomad", and says:
"You can be sitting still surfing the Internet, and experience other worlds, ideas, and societies. But I’ve found that there is nothing better than visiting a different country, even if for three days. ... You can’t only be a virtual Global Nomad, with goggles on, in a virtual reality. You have to be there. You have to see it, smell it and live it. You have to see people, travel, and interact."
Crypto is “worth nothing”
Nouriel Roubini says the cryptocurrency world is a "stinking cesspool" and is fundamentally “worth nothing.” He said in testimony to U.S. Senators in October that that crypto is "the mother or father of all scams and bubbles."
"It is indeed laughable to think that useless crypto-currencies or s***coins have any fundamentals of value. Their fundamental value is ZERO or actually negative ... if you price correctly their negative externality of hogging energy and destroying the environment," he said in a tweet.
Furthermore, the professor claims the “wealth in the crypto universe is even more concentrated than it is in North Korea.” He asserts that the claim of “decentralization” is a myth propagated by the pseudo-billionaires who control this pseudo-industry.
Blockchain is the “most over-hyped” technology
The global economist says that now that the crypto bloodbath is in full view the new refuge of the crypto scoundrels is “blockchain.”
He said during the same testimony at the Congress that “the technology now alleged to be the cure of all global problems, including poverty, famines, and even diseases” is actually “the most over-hyped and least useful technology in human history,"
Roubini said. "In practice, it is nothing better than a glorified spreadsheet or database.”
In a recent article published by The Guardian, Roubini said: “blockchain is not about decentralization and democracy; it is about greed.”
All this said, Nouriel Roubini still insists that he is not against crypto. On the contrary, the professor says he is open to any type of innovation but is an expert on asset bubbles.
“I can see a bubble when there is one — and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst.”
Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Destroy Cryptocurrencies
Roubini believes that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)by central banks will destroy cryptocurrencies.
“The idea [CBDCs] deserves serious consideration, as it would replace an inherently crisis-prone banking system and close the door on crypto-scammers,” he wrote in a recent opinion piece on Project Syndicate.
“If a CBDC were to be issued, it would immediately displace cryptocurrencies, which are not scalable, cheap, secure, or actually decentralized,” the economist claims.