“Not a fan”: Former Fed Chair slates Bitcoin

Janet Yellen may not be Chair of the Federal Reserve anymore but that hasn’t stopped her FUD’ing Bitcoin

“I will just say outright I am not a fan, and let me tell you why,” she said. “I know there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies and maybe something is coming down the line that is more appealing but I think first of all, very few transactions are actually handled by Bitcoin, and many of those that do take place on Bitcoin are illegal, illicit transactions.”

Illegal and illicit

These are two very well chosen words. The word legal implies a law, and licit relates to being ‘lawful’. When thinking about the law you have to think about jurisdiction, a court and a judge. Things like justice and fair get in the way of ‘incentives’ all too often.

A Redditor called Raz, has sent 0.0031642 BTC ($20), to Yellen, from his Biterica Bitcoin gifting service. All she has to do to claim it is verify her email address to log into her wallet. I wonder if from a legal distinction at what point she may officially be a crypto owner. Some may consider that her private keys are only unlockable by her personal email address.

FED to FUD

Skin-in-game Bitcoin entrepreneur, Francis Pouliot, tweeted out a video of the speech and said Yellen delivered a “meticulous five-minute rant against Bitcoin, robotically spewing scripted FUD”.

If you are wondering why the video quality is so bad, it is due to him “hanging out in the back with the cool kids working in FinTech – that didn’t get a spot at the bankers’ VIP tables”.