Nouriel Roubini, an economist notorious for his anti-cryptocurrency stance, recently squared off against Mike Novogratz, ex-hedge fund manager and CEO of Galaxy Digital, at the SALT 2019 conference in Las Vegas on May 8.
During the conference, Roubini did what he does best: he lambasted Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies in general, saying crypto is nothing but a giant bubble, and Bitcoin and its peers should not even be called cryptocurrencies.
The infamous economist said:
“Crypto is the mother and father of all bubbles… cryptocurrency is totally a misnomer. To be a currency, you have to be a unit of account, valuable and a scalable means of payment.”
Roubini Lambasts Bitcoin
Continuing his rant, Roubini addressed Bitcoin’s scalability, stating that it doesn’t even come close to the thousands of transactions per second that credit cards are capable of, highlighting that Bitcoin can only process 7 onchain transactions per second.
However, Roubini failed to acknowledge Bitcoin’s scalability solutions such as SegWit, which has increased throughput and reduced transaction fees. He also failed to touch on the lightning network scalability solution, which could potentially process millions of BTC transactions per second.
To end his rant, Roubini claimed that Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a store of stable value, and that it is easily manipulated, causing the price to have violent price swings in either direction.
He said:
“I’ve never seen such a level of manipulation. The reality is, these are not currencies.”
Novogratz Has Bitcoin’s Back
Following Roubini’s attack on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, Novogratz, a long-time Bitcoin bull and crypto investor, pointed out Bitcoin’s price recovery after 2018’s collapse.
He said:
“The reality is there’s a tremendous amount of stuff going on. In some ways, there’s been a small miracle. The debate is over, bitcoin won. It is now seen by people all around the world as a legitimate place to [store] their value.”
Adding to this, Novogratz highlighted some things going on in the space, pointing to major crypto endeavors like Fidelity’s digital asset platform that’s set to launch this year and the fact that Facebook is launching a cryptocurrency.
All in all, Roubini has been chastising Bitcoin for years, yet it’s still here and continues to capture value and grow to new heights beyond belief.
Do you think Nouriel Roubini will ever change his views on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? What’s it going to take for him to change his anti-crypto stance? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
