In a recent interview, well-known American economist Paul Krugman dismissed the popular crypto. Krugman believed that although bitcoin had been around for a decade it did not even “come close” to the promise of being money.
Like many others who have said before him, Krugman added that bitcoin was like gold. While influencers think that the asset could be a hedge against high inflation risk. The economist claimed that people valued the digital asset even if it was not used. Krugman thought that such a view was boasted by “techno-libertarian view” that the crypto is the future.
Mark Cuban, American television personality and entrepreneur, also compared Bitcoin to gold. He said that as long as people accepted bitcoin “as a digital version of gold,” it was investable. Cuban even said that the idea about bitcoin replacing fiat currency was counterproductive.
Krugman has been critical of bitcoin ever since the first bull run in 2013 and even called the asset “evil,” at the time. He was also unconvinced then regarding BTC’s stable source of value.
He later wrote about bitcoin again in a 2011 op-ed piece in the New York Times; the article drew criticism from many, including ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees who commented on the bitcointalk.org forum:
OMG!!!! Krugman wrote an article on Bitcoin!?!?!?! That is actually serious news! And rejoice Bitcoiners, for this is the same “economist” that still doesn’t understand Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. If Krugman’s against it, Bitcoin must be absolutely amazing!!
The criticism was probably because Krugman had indeed made wrong predictions before. In a 1998 article, the economist questioned the future role of the Internet. He claimed that Internet’s impact on the world economy would be no greater than fax machines.
