Nouriel Roubini dismisses ICOs and slams blockchain as “fraud of the century”

Talk about the ability to bring a whole industry together, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. Well, Nouriel Roubini managed to do just that by saying blockchain is useless and all ICOs are scams.

Roubini – chairman of his own Roubini Global Economics firm and a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business – gave both barrels to blockchain and cypto during an interview.

READ MORE: Wikipedia founder slams ICOs as scams

“It’s a scam. The whole ICO industry is a scam. People are robbing, raising funds for projects with zero value,” Roubini told Forbes contributor Naeem Aslam.

The biggest fraud of the century

According to Aslam, Roubini took the stage at a Las Vegas blockchain event in a speech in which he said blockchain is also nothing but a scam “or even worse the biggest fraud of the century”.

Roubini believes that the US Securities and Exchanges Commission’s rejection of several Bitcoin ETFs is “no surprise at all. It isn’t the real asset; it is nothing but a fad”.

READ MORE: Fraud in ICOs ‘remains very real problem’

The NYU professor explains that blockchain is nothing but a useless and over-hyped technology that will never go anywhere because of the proof of stake and the scalability issues.

“No matter what, this is not going to become another benchmark because it is just too slow,” he told Aslam. In Roubini’s opinion, Bitcoin doesn’t comply with the definition of money.

“It’s complete nonsense”

Then Roubini said that comparing blockchain technology to the Internet in its early stages is “complete nonsense. The adoption of this technology is nowhere close to that level”.

He said the fact the banks are investing resources in testing blockchain “doesn’t mean they’re going to adopt it”.

READ MORE: Top US economists slam Bitcoin

He added that “there is nothing new or unique about banks testing new technologies. They test thousands of new technologies every day”.

Roubini on Twitter

Roubini frequently goes on to Twitter to trash Bitcoin. On 25th August, he tweeted that “Bitcoin is a collapsing means of payment and thus is not a currency. $70 million of transactions in a month and collapsing from a $270 million per month last year. That is pathetic.”

Various Twitter users replied angrily, some saying that “using your logic, #USD is not a cryptocurrency”.

A user with the Twitter handles @MiFalck limited his or her reply to a GIF of a person rolling back his eyes.

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Saber or @pabx06 responded to Roubini saying the “same things goes for travellers’ checks: “Because traveller’s check is denominated in USD: it must mean US Dollar is dying”.

SandieSN replied that the “US Dollar has lost 92% of its value since 1920, & will never recover. There has never been a fiat in history that hasn’t collapsed. Bitcoin is a peer to peer currency, requiring no 3rd party for payments. This is true freedom. No more being told daily withdrawal limit is €60”.

KesKon agreed: “#US #Dollar Use in #International #Trade Keeps #Falling Given the Rise of Other #Currencies. Using your logic, #USD is not a currency”.

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Various news outlets said that Roubini’s speech in Las Vegas sparked a heated discussion on the real benefits of crypto and blockchain.

Roubini, a world-renowned economist, is arguably more well-known for having predicted the 2008 economic crisis. He is now assuring Bitcoin will hit zero and that blockchain is no required in FinTech because of its scalability issues.