Economist Nouriel Roubini and former risk analyst Nassim Taleb took aim at crypto at the CoinGeek conference this week, while the always controversial Craig Wright boasted that the BSV blockchain was on track to hit billions of transactions a second.<\/p>\n
Taleb, the author of best-selling economic books Black Swan <\/em>and Skin in the Game<\/em>, was a controversial addition to the lineup of the CoinGeek Conference in Zurich and came under fire on social media for giving BSV legitimacy.<\/p>\n Roubini meanwhile, offered a “greatest hits” version of his of attacks against crypto, familiar from crypto conferences prior to the pandemic. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is no reliability, no regulation, no AML, no KYC. [Crypto] is used by terrorists, money launderers, human traffickers, criminals, tax evaders.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Roubini argued that cryptographic tokens \u2014 which includes BSV presumably \u2014 are unnecessary and should be isolated from the value of the decentralized data verification enabled by blockchain technology. <\/p>\n \u201cData is very valuable, it\u2019s the new oil,\u201d he explained, lamenting that \u201c99%\u201d of the fintech application \u201chas nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.\u201d What is needed, Roubini explained, is a service that is \u201creliable, that stores the data, says who owns it and who pays for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Taleb followed Roubini on the panel, agreeing that the data utilities enabled by cryptocurrency should be understood as a separate phenomenon to the cryptographic tokens issued by many blockchain projects. He shared his belief that those who need crypto and those who can use it are not aligned, adding:<\/p>\n \u201cWho needs cryptos? Well, criminals need cryptos, except it doesn\u2019t work for them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Related:\u00a0Bitcoin\u2019s usefulness is on a whole other level, depending on where you live<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The host attempted to get the panel back on track asking Taleb if he agrees that \u201cBTC does not represent what the Bitcoin Whitepaper describes.\u201d <\/p>\n In response, Taleb admitted he thinks Bitcoin in its current form does not resemble the whitepaper, but countered that \u201cthe currency in the whitepaper may not be what we are looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n NChain\u2019s chief scientist, Craig Wright, talked up BSV, asserting it was \u201cnever designed to be a currency, it\u2019s digital cash\u201d and went on to make the claim:<\/p>\n \u201cWe will have a billion transactions a second in a few years, and then we will do one trillion a second.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As you might expect, those Bitcoiners who did tune in were hate watching the broadcast, including YouTuber \u201cBTC Sessions\u201d who shared that they only \u201chopped on the stream for a second just to give it a thumbs down.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright\u2019s chief critic Arther van Pelt also tuned in to throw stones and tweeted that the panel was receiving very little viewership, calling it a \u201cclown show.\u201d<\/p>\n