Three of the most popular US economists have expressed gloomy predictions about Bitcoin’s (BTC) destiny in an interview with the UK magazine FN on Monday. Joseph Stiglitz, Nouriel Roubini, and Kenneth Rogoff saw different reasons for their belief that BTC has a negative future.
Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winner for economic studies and currently a professor at Columbia University, said that the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization would fail after governments start combating money laundering and tax avoidance practices made with the use of Bitcoin.
“You cannot have a means of payment that is based on secrecy when you’re trying to create a transparent banking system,” Stiglitz, told the FN. “If you open up a hole like bitcoin, then all the nefarious activity will go through that hole, and no government can allow that.”
The relatively small BTC market is the reason why states still have not begun a campaign against BTC, but when its capitalization becomes significant, governments will “use the hammer,” according to Stiglitz, who served as a Chief Economist at the World Bank during 1997-2000.
Roubini, famous as ‘Dr. Doom’ because of his prediction of the last global financial crisis, said that Bitcoin is not a currency because BTC is not a means of payment, a stable store of value, or a unit of account.
“Bitcoin is not even accepted at bitcoin conferences, and how can something that falls 20% one day and then rises 20% the next be a stable store of value?”
Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a professor at Harvard University, said that state bodies would target BTC because of the anonymity that it guarantees.
“Bitcoin could easily be worth just $100 in 10 years,” Rogoff said. “People in power will move to regulate anonymous transactions. That you can be sure of.”
On Tuesday, Bitcoin shrank below $6,400 due to several pieces of negative news.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
