Bitcoin is going through some rough days, as many experts take up arms against the most popular cryptocurrency and make harsh statements about it. Read our digest to find out who and for what scolded bitcoin.
1. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics and professor at Columbia University, said that the anonymity of bitcoin transactions opens the door to the criminal market and heinous activities.
He also pointed out that a transparent banking system and anonymity do not work well together. Stiglitz is confident that the demand for cryptocurrency will disappear right after it will be legislated. Bitcoin will become useless, the expert said:
“My feeling is when you regulate it so you couldn’t engage in money laundering and all these other [crimes], there will be no demand for bitcoin.”
2. Bitcoin also came under fire by Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Harvard University professor and a professional chess player.
Earlier, he predicted a drop in the rate of the largest cryptocurrency to $100 within 10 years. Rogoff again confirmed his prediction. The expert also expressed confidence that the government will soon regulate the anonymous transactions.
3. The New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the global crisis of 2008, said that the digital currency does not correspond to any characteristic of money. He also noted an interesting fact that the most famous cryptocurrency is not accepted even at profile conferences.
“How can something that falls 20% one day and then rises 20% the next be a stable store of value?”— he said.
4. Fan Wenzhong, the head of the international department of China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said that the idea of blockchain is not novel and it’s not worth mythologizing the technology.
The expert believes that the idea of multi-user accounting is far from revolutionary. On the contrary, it is already hundreds-of-years-old. Wenzhong, however, still paid tribute to the distributed ledger technology, saying that it’s a useful innovation. Yet, he doesn’t consider cryptocurrencies to be useful as well.
5. Steven Major from HSBC Holdings, called the collapse of the cryptocurrency one of the indicators of the coming credit crisis. The expert is also confident that the sell-off in the stock market and the volatility leaps speak of the upcoming tightening of credit conditions around the world.
“We appear to be in the midst of a slow-motion credit crunch,” Major stressed.
Why it is important
- High volatility cryptocurrency is criticized by many economists. Despite this, a lot of countries are going to issue their own coins and actively introduce blockchain into government services. 1. The IMF said that cryptocurrencies will revolutionize the financial world and can become the main means of payment in some countries. At the same time, experts of the world central bank BIS believe that transactions require too many resources and can even lead to a global disruption of the Internet.
By Ekaterina Ulyanova