After claiming that cryptocurrencies are vastly expensive and only appeal to criminals and bank skeptics and are therefore essentially useless, Paul Krugman has now deemed them to be such.
On Friday, the Nobel Prize-winning economist attacked bitcoin and other digital currencies in a thread on Twitter, likening Ron DeSantis’ contempt for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to Rick Santorum’s contempt for the National Weather Service.
Indisputable, he tweeted, private weather services offer a valuable service. Cryptocurrencies … not so much.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times in April, Krugman criticized cryptocurrency even more harshly.
He wrote, At the moment, those who honestly, mistakenly, don’t trust banks and persons involved in illegal activities make up the majority of the crypto demand.
The author of the piece questioned DeSantis’s opposition to the potential formation of a CBDC and is the governor of Florida and a Republican presidential candidate.
Americans who distrust banks might accept a digital dollar produced by the US government, according to Krugman. As only criminals would continue to utilize illicit tokens, he claimed that this would aid in deflating the cryptocurrency bubble and lift the curtain covering the industry’s shadow side.
While Krugman stated that rejecting a digital dollar would have a different outcome, DeSantis asserted that authorities might regulate what a CBDC is spent on and use it to restrict Americans’ rights.
The capacity of wise guys to cheat taxes, launder money, purchase and sell illegal substances, and participate in extortion, he claimed, would be protected, not the rights of Floridians to purchase gas or firearms.
Over the past ten years, Krugman has attacked cryptocurrencies numerous times. He has denounced them as being wasteful, ineffective, unsteady, useless, worthless, and in danger of total collapse.
