Dr Doom Strikes Again: “Buterin is “Dictator for Life”

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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October 23, 2023

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Nouriel Roubini, American economist dubbed Dr Doom for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, is taking another shot at crypto: now, he tweets how crypto is “more centralized than North Korea.” The crypto community, from big names to everyday people, were quick to tear his argument down.

Nouriel Roubini. Source: a video screenshot.

Decentralization in crypto is a myth. It is a system more centralized than North Korea: miners are centralized, exchanges are centralized, developers are centralized dictators (Buterin is "dictator for life" ) & the Gini inequality coefficient of bitcoin is worse than North Korea

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) October 8, 2018

While most people in the community are wondering where he got these ideas from, others are pointing out flaws in his thinking: “He conflates the entities that are centralized, with having a choice whether or not to use those entities. (And, different cryptos are different, so this generalization is kind of invalid anyway.),” explains Reddit user u/Codependentte.

The Gini coefficient that Dr Doom references is a statistical measure of distribution, often used as a gauge of economic inequality, measuring income distribution. u/Codependentte continues, “[Using the Gini coefficient] is like saying the US economy is very unequal because banks hold lots of money, and individuals hold very little. Like comparing apples to Thursdays. The true comparison is banks to banks, and individuals to individuals, apples to apples.”

And while this Reddit user explains exactly how Dr Doom is wrong, others are taking a more direct hit: Ran NeuNer, host of CNBC Africa’s CryptoTrader show, tweets, “I am now fully convinced that @Nouriel is talking down Crypto so he can buy the FUD. No one can believe the stuff he tweets…”

Other Twitter users are reluctantly telling him to re-check his facts: in a reply to the original tweet, user @Lynchian writes, “That’s either a poorly informed or a dishonest statement. Coming from you, I’d hate to place it in either categories.”

There are those tagging Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of the Ethereum platform, in their replies to “set this old man straight,” while Reddit roots for Andreas M. Antonopoulos, the famous Bitcoin evangelist, to take him on: “I will pay to see a debate Antonopoulos vs. Roubini. It will be a piece of cake for Andreas,” writes u/chek2fire.

This is not the first time Dr Doom has taken a shot at crypto: at the Milken Institute Global Conference in May this year, he called Bitcoin fanatics as “suckers” and said repeatedly that its underlying technology was “bulls**t,” while calling blockchain a “glorified Excel spreadsheet.” Also, earlier this year he said that “Bitcoin starts to look like a dinosaur on the way to extinction.”

Moreover, on October 11, the U.S. senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will meet in open discussion to conduct a hearing on “Exploring the Cryptocurrency and blockchain Ecosystem.” Nouriel Roubini is one of the witnesses at the hearing.

A crypto influencer Ivan on Tech reacted:

Will be interesting to see what @Nouriel Roubini says at this hearing. Will he reiterate that blockchain is only a ”glorified Excel spreadsheet”, call Bitcoin supporters ”cyber terrorists” and ”hodl nuts” again or come up with something completely new? https://t.co/pC4n2Nny2X

— Ivan on Tech 🥕🥕🫐🫐🍓 Moralis (@IvanOnTech) October 8, 2018