Crypto critic and professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business Nouriel Roubini is expressing skepticism on Bitcoin () and other digital assets amid a banking crisis in the US.
In a new Stansberry Research interview, Roubini that the crypto ecosystem has numerous bad actors, and the end days of the asset class are near.
According to Roubini, crypto does not qualify as a store of wealth and is “highly risky” as was evidenced by the collapse of FTX exchange under the watch of its founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
“It’s [Crypto] highly risky. The lesson of the last year and a half has been that crypto is extremely dangerous. There are so many crooks, so many frauds. You know SBF and FTX are not an exception – it’s the rule.
The world of conmen, criminals, crooks, tax evaders, and conmen are the result. And this entire crypto house of cards is collapsing.
If you want to have safety of your wealth, the last place you want to be is in crypto.”
While arguing that crypto’s volatility disqualifies it as a safe haven, Roubini alleges that crypto-friendly banks Silvergate and Signature collapsed because of “doing toxic stuff.”
“I mean, first of all, Bitcoin has a huge amount of volatility. You know, slightly more than a year ago it was at $69,000. These days it’s between $19,000 and $20,000. So it’s lost about 80% of its value. The other top-10 [crypto assets] have lost more than that. You have a huge amount of market risk. You can wipe out your wealth in it.
Secondly, we’re talking about Silicon Valley Bank. But guess what? In the last week, two major crypto banks went bust. Silvergate and now Signature Bank. Because they were, again, doing toxic stuff and people who had their deposits may or may not be bailed out.”
