Economist andNew York Universityprofessor Nouriel Roubini is perhaps best known for calling the 2008 financial crisis...

Economist andNew York Universityprofessor Nouriel Roubini is perhaps best known for calling the 2008 financial crisis in a series of articles and presentations starting in 2006. However, Roubini is no one trick pony – his research on emerging markets makes him an expert on speculative bubbles of all sorts.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that he’s now sticking pins in the entire cryptocurrency/blockchain bubble of bubbles.

At last week’sBlockShow conference in Las Vegas, Roubini did not mince his words. “There has been a total collapse this year in the cryptocurrency game,” he told an audience largely skeptical of his point of view. “It’s a crypto apocalypse.”

Deflating Bitcoin and all other Cryptos as Well

Nouriel wasted no time poking holes in every Bitcoin sacred cow. For example, the claim that Bitcoin can serve as money. “Bitcoin is not money. To be money it would need to be a unit of account, means of payment, and a stable source of value and purchasing power,” Nouriel explained. “Bitcoin is none of these. Other cryptos are worse.”

He contrasted Bitcoin and other blockchain-based payment technologies with modern payment systems likePayPal,Square, and Alipay in China. “Today’s digital systems are used by millions of people per day, and have nothing to do with blockchain,” he said.

Bitcoin’s second sacred cow to fall to Roubini’s withering arguments: decentralization. “Decentralization is a total myth,” Roubini explained, as crypto miners (transaction processors), exchanges, developers, and wealth are all in fact centralized.

While in theory, anybody can be a crypto miner, successful mining requires an immense investment that leads to pooling of mining resources. As a result, “the top five mining pools control 70% of all mining,” Roubini pointed out – mostly in places like Russia, China, Belarus, and other places where organized crime syndicates dominate the crypto world.

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Centralization of Wealth

Crypto aficionados tout its ability to distribute wealth beyond financial insiders to anyone with a smartphone. The reality, however, is quite different. Not only is 99% of crypto trading taking place on a small number of centralized exchanges, but the people with the wealth from such trading are few in number as well.

To illustrate the extent that crypto centralizes wealth, Roubini referred to theGini coefficient, an economic term that expresses the distribution of wealth across a population from 0% (everybody equally wealthy) to 100% (one person has all the wealth.)

The Gini coefficient for Europe, for example, is about 50%. North Korea stands at 86%. And bitcoin? How about 88%. “Bitcoin wealth is more concentrated than North Korean wealth,” Roubini pointed out.

Taking the Wind out of Tokens

AsI concluded in my last article, much of the activity around blockchain is nothing more than pathetic sleight-of-hand games with worthless tokens.

I’m sure Roubini would agree. “A world with thousands of tokens makes zero economic sense,” he said. “Tokens are only good for gouging consumers.”

If tokens don’t make sense, then it would follow those initial coin offerings (ICOs) wouldn’t make much sense either. “ICOs are effectively non-compliant securities,” he said, pointing out that while many ICO fans position their ‘coins’ as utility tokens rather than security tokens to avoid securities laws, the reality is that they are in fact securities – and in the US at least, illegal ones.

What about Smart Contracts?

Ethereum is the second most popular crypto behind Bitcoin, likely because it’s possible to run ‘smart contracts’ on the Ethereum blockchain. What does Roubini think of smart contracts? “They’re neither smart nor contracts,” he said.

They are too plagued with hard-to-fix bugs to be smart, and until the lawyers give the thumbs up, the word ‘contract’ is overly optimistic as well.

Furthermore, even though Ethereum has become established in crypto circles, smart contracts – and the distributed apps or ‘dapps’ that leverage them – haven’t amounted to much. “75% of dapps are Crypto Kitties, Ponzi schemes, and casino games,” Roubini pointed out.

Where does that leave blockchain? “A peer-to-peer distributed public ledger is total nonsense,” Roubini added – leaving only private, permissioned blockchain solutions with trusted individuals or organizations processing the transactions.

When the scammers have milked the crypto insanity for all its worth and they and their marks have all gone home, permissioned blockchain solutions – what I refer to as ‘enterprise blockchain’ – will be all that remains.

How do I short this board

NERD!!

I'm sure he calculated that 88% with Satoshis 1kk included, which of course doesn't make sense

Wow, unbelievable i just sold everything, thanks.

Maximum FUD and provably wrong in many cases. He was a one trick pony, now he's just a donkey.

Why do you need someone else to tell you this? Is it not obvious?

>world reknown economist can't come up with any better FUD than Jow Forums
owenwilsonwow.wav

In 5 years time I'm going to send him 5 LINK.

DELET

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0.001 btc for a coffee is stable. the price can't fluctuate. the price of the coffee will always be 0.001 btc until the onwer of the cofee shop decides to lower or raise the price. the number of btc available is capped at 21 million. fuck that stupid economist he doesnt know shit. dumbass nigger bitch

>Nouriel Roubini was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Jewish parents.
hmmmmmmmmmmmm

No dont do it. let him eat spiders. and btb OP the 2008 crisis was as clear and blatant as an oncoming train. You didnt need to predict anything. I remember in 2006 when Ireland said they were paying teachers from the proceeds of stamp duty. that's when I first twigged, and Im not that bright.

kek

The gini coefficient for Euro land is 50%? Damn, that old money is strong

This will be to Roubini’s reputation what Paul Krugman’s internet comments were to his. Sorry Dr. Doom.

Thanks just sold all my link

It's not, unless you count Russia, in actual europe the countries vary between 25 and 35%.

>Decentralization is a total myth
it's about the computing power not the fucking wealth REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You know what this means Jow Forums. BUY BUY BUY.

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>A peer-to-peer distributed public ledger is total nonsense

You know, his arguments kinda sorta almost got to me up until the point where I read this line. He went after specifics and it was like "Well ok he kinda has a point on some stuff" but then he had to go and attack the basic concept behind the whole thing as if it's some sort of a bad thing... How much more transparent of a bootlicker can you get, jeez.

Joke's on me tho, as if it wasn't a dead giveaway when you know he's a (((nobel prize))) winrar

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also the many accounts that have 10k bitcoins that were lost because people paid pennies and just forgot about them / lost keys.

distributiion is way better than 88%.

also I would like to see the dollar wealth % too.

Thanks, this FUD almost got me. Buying more now instead.

sensible FUD but FUD nethertheless
When you see the OTC markets lighting up because banks and elites see a new speculation tool, your 'rational markets' assumption is stupid.

Everything he said is based on the global fiat system still reigning supreme.

So, basically, the big fallacy behind this guys argument is that he assumes legacy systems will still be the same, which is kind of what BTC aims to change. For instance:

> “Bitcoin is not money. To be money it would need to be a unit of account, means of payment, and a stable source of value and purchasing power,”

BTC value fluctuates in relation to fiat value, that’s true. However, .01 BTC will always be .01 BTC, that value does not fluctuate.

Some of his other points are laughably shortsighted as well
> “75% of dapps are Crypto Kitties, Ponzi schemes, and casino games,” Roubini pointed out

Yeah, and one of the most popular uses for the internet in the late 90s was to show your coworkers the dancing baby gif. Dapps, and the crypto space in general, are sill in their infancy in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps the most telling though:
> Ethereum is the second most popular crypto behind Bitcoin, likely because it’s possible to run ‘smart contracts’ on the Ethereum blockchain. What does Roubini think of smart contracts? “They’re neither smart nor contracts,” he said.
> They are too plagued with hard-to-fix bugs to be smart, and until the lawyers give the thumbs up, the word ‘contract’ is overly optimistic as well

tbc...

Ok so if you pay close enough attention you can see how full of shit this guy is
> “They’re neither smart nor contracts,” he said. They are too plagued with hard-to-fix bugs to be smart

Again, because the whole concept of smart-contracts is brand fucking new, relatively. Either way, this statement basically amounts to “because this technology is not fully developed yet and is still hard to use/implement it will never be useful” which is obviously fucking stupid. Think about the learning curve required for the first generation of computer users? Now imagine if we just abandoned the idea of computers because some chucklefuck economist didn’t know how they worked

Next:
> and until the lawyers give the thumbs up, the word ‘contract’ is overly optimistic as well
First off, That statement doesn’t even consider the broadness of just saying “lawyers” fucking kek, pretty much every country uses BTC and smart contracts by association, which “Lawers” get to make that decision?)

Second, a contract is an agreement between two people. End of story. Neither he, nor lawyers, get to decide what constitutes an agreement. Lawyers deal with the enforceability of the agreement, and when smart contracts become more streamlined and useable for the layman (non-coders/non-technically proficient users) the law will have to figure out how to deal with the enforceability of these smart contracts. Again, this technology is still in its infancy, just imagine if we didn’t allow E-Contracts (contracts that can be signed and executed completely online). Seems fucking stupid and counter-intuitive right? That’s what these “projections” or whatever you want to call them look like now. I know the comparisons to the internet can become tiresome, but it’s the most useful comparison to world-changing technology that even the oldest and “wisest” dinosaurs were completely wrong about.

Hmmmm indeed

Also for a guy who’s been in emerging markets and speculative bubbles since the early 90s, his record is awfully quiet about the Dotcom Bubble, perhaps the biggest speculative bubble in history, which occurred in the fucking middle of his career. Why the fuck should I listen to an emerging markets analysis and speculative bubble “expert” that was active from 1990-201x who missed the fucking Dotcom Bubble (and his record is also silent on the various other semi-recent tech bubbles). He’s only infamous because he called the real estate bubble. If anything, the real estate bubble shows how fucked the current system is.

But wait! What about his credentials?!!
> Worked at the IMF (International Monetary Fund)
> Worked at the Federal Reserve, World Bank
> Worked for the Bank of Israel (Born in Istanbul, Turkey to Iranian Jewish parents)
> Senior Economist during the Clinton administration (Dotcom Bubble)
> Treasury Secretary during Obama administration (Real Estate Bubble)

How could he possibly have a personal stake in Bitcoins failure!

Thank you user.

Couldn't have summarized this cunt better myself. Wherever you are, give yourself a pat on the back.

Based and red pilled user. That was Gods work