With an alias like Dr. Doom, Nouriel Roubini has been at the forefront of pointing out doom and gloom around the cryptocurrency industry since it started making waves in the mainstream. The economist who called the 2008 financial crisis has now taken glee in what he calls ‘Crypto-Carnage’ after Bitcoin shed some recent gains.
Roubini has become well known in the cryptocurrency space for his negativity and naysaying surrounding Bitcoin and other digital assets. However, his arguments are often one-eyed and lack full discussion or discourse.
His recent tweets, which have followed from the substantial price drop in Bitcoin following China’s crackdown, again looks to show only one side of the coin. He has cherry-picked a few statistics as well as leaned back on the old argument that cryptocurrencies are environmentally dangerous.
Bitcoin and Crypto Carnage
Roubini began his tirade against Bitcoin on Tuesday with a tweet that started with typical inflammatory language.
Crypto-Carnage: BTC down 65% from peak; other top 10 crypto-currencies down 80% from peak. 1000s of other shitcoins down 95% to 99% from peak. Total crypto-apocalypse!
— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 26, 2019
Bitcoin’s peak was its rise to $20,000 in December of 2017 as the cryptocurrency rose astronomically through only a few weeks. However, that massive price spike gives Roubini the option to decide when he will base his statistics from.
While Bitcoin is down 65 percent from its $20,000 peak, it is still seeing positive gains year to date. Bitcoin began the year at $3,700, and even after the recent fall in price is sitting at over $7,000, which equates to 100 percent gains this year.
This fact was not lost on Twitter users who responded to his bold comments.
Funny how you always mention “since peak” but never year on year?
— Crypto Godfather ?? (@CryptoGodfatha) November 26, 2019
You have a vendetta against bitcoin. Gold is down 23% from its peak but up 16% from last year.
Bitcoin is still 100% + YTD
— ?illy Hamilton (@RealismGroup) November 26, 2019
More so, Roubini has been caught out before on his usage of the term ‘shit coin.’ At the CC Forum Investment in Blockchain and AI conference held in London this year, Roubini and Bobby Lee clashed as the economist praised the ever-depreciating dollar while missing its similarity to the ‘shit coins’ he bashes.
Apocalypse Now
Not done with his slating of cryptocurrency, Roubini, on Wednesday, turned his focus to Ethereum. Using the same argument that the coin had dropped 90 percent from its peak, he ramped up his inflammatory language.
Crypto-Apocalypse: Ethereum down 90% from the peak, in free fall and now close to the 2018 low. Still a long way from zero that is its fundamental value. Actually it is worth negative given all the toxic externalities of energy waste and pollution that its mining generates
— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 27, 2019
More than just translating the market performance of Ethereum in this tweet, the economist also decided to bring up an old and ongoing argument about the power usage of crypto.
This argument has been going around in circles for some time now, with a lot of the data admiralty uncertain. Yet, in the same week that these claims were made by Roubini, major science and technology magazine, The New Scientist, published a report stating Bitcoin’s climate change impact may be much smaller than we thought.
Images are courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter.
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