Nobel Prize Laureate Warns Of Eternal Blockchain Winter

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize award winner, is warning about an imminent eternal virtual asset winter for blockchain-based projects, including BTC and other virtual asset networks. In a New York Times opinion piece published on 1st December, the economist discusses the real utility of this technology, and how there are already signs that forecast a future downfall.

Krugman denounces the real utility of this technology when there are other centralized substitutes that presently function quite well. On this, Krugman explained his disbelief, mentioning

“What’s the point? Why go to the trouble and expense of maintaining a ledger in many places, and basically carrying that ledger around every time a transaction takes place?”

Furthermore, Krugman criticizes Bitcoin’s reason to be, mentioning that

“Banks rarely steal their customers’ assets, while crypto institutions more easily succumb to the temptation, and extreme inflation that destroys money’s value generally happens only amid political chaos.”

Nonetheless, this opinion is different from the one that he expressed in the month of May last year. At the time, he expressed that while he did not trust in the fundamentals behind Bitcoin, he was convinced that the market was a “cult that can survive indefinitely.” In the month of June, he compared digital assets to the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis, saying “it is a house built not on sand, but on nothing at all.”