‘Dr. Doom’ Nouriel Roubini Says Cryptocurrencies Are ‘Mother Of All Bubbles’
Economics professor Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed “Dr. Doom” for his pessimistic economic predictions, said in a prepared statement he will deliver to a congressional committee this week that he believes that cryptocurrencies are the “mother of all bubbles.”
Roubini, who teaches at the New York University Stern School of Business, is expected to make his statement in front of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. In his prepared statement, highlighted by MarketWatch, Roubini warned that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are nothing more than a “glorified spreadsheet or database.”
Roubini, a longtime cryptocurrency critic, will be joined at the Senate hearing by Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Coin Center, a non-profit research firm for cryptocurrency and decentralized technology, according to MarketWatch.
“It is clear by now that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies represent the mother of all bubbles, which explains why literally every human being I met between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2017 asked me first if they should buy them,” Roubini says in his prepared text.
“… Scammers, swindlers, criminals, charlatans, insider whales and carnival barkers (all conflicted insiders) tapped into clueless retail investors’ FOMO (‘fear of missing out’), and took them for a ride selling them and dumping on them scammy crappy assets at the peak that then went into a bust and crash – in a matter of months – like you have not seen in any history of financial bubbles,” he continued.
Juniper Research said, according to Bloomberg News, that Bitcoin, the king of the cryptocurrencies, has seen its daily transactions fall from an average of 360,000 a day in late 2017 to 230,000 last month.
The researchers added that daily transaction values for Bitcoin have tumbled more than $3.7 billion to less than $670 million over the same time.
“Now that the crypto bloodbath is in full view the new refuge of the crypto scoundrels is ‘blockchain,’ the technology underlying crypto that is now alleged to be the cure of all global problems, including poverty, famines and even diseases,” Roubini said in his Senate text.
“But as discussed in detail below blockchain is the most overhyped – and least useful – technology in human history: in practice it is nothing better than a glorified spreadsheet or database,” he continued.
Roubini argued in his statement that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies cannot be considered actual currency because they are not serviceable units of account, a means of payments, and a stable store of value. He said that cryptocurrencies can fluctuate in price by 20-30 percent in a single day, making it unreliable for purchasing power.
