Paul Krugman, economist, shares what he thinks about crypto: “It’s purely a speculative asset or a vehicle for crime”
A well-known economist has hit out at the world of crypto, describing it as having “no legitimate use”.
Cryptocurrency may still dominate headlines and investor chatter, not to mention floods of online comments. However, economist Paul Krugman argues that the excitement has little to do with real economic progress, but something infinitely darker instead.
“There is essentially no legitimate use for crypto,” the 2008 Nobel Prize winner claims, “and nobody is using it for anything legitimate. Fewer than 2% of Americans have ever made a payment in crypto. It’s purely a speculative asset or a vehicle for crime.”
When further quizzed on the incoming comments against his opinion, Krugman described the world of crypto as “a cult.”
In a scathing reflection on his Substack, Nobel economist Paul Krugman further argued that the sudden rise of cryptocurrency isn’t about decentralising finance: it’s about lining up with Donald Trump’s political and financial agenda.
Krugman’s core claim was similar to that of the video in the sense that crypto, far from being a revolutionary form of money, plays almost no real economic role. In his Substack post titled “Reminder: Crypto Is a Trump Trade”, he noted that despite years of hype, digital assets have barely broken through as a means of payment, except in shady corners.
Krugman warns that Trump’s so-called “strategic crypto reserve” is little more than a government-sanctioned gift to an industry that’s already seen serious scandals.
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He also wrote in 2024 that the only thing surprising about crypto was its “durability” and “the way Bitcoin and its emulators have managed to come back from repeated market crashes and scandals.” He explained that the reason was that “it’s hard to conclude that someone was misleading you when you never understood what was being said in the first place.”
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