Following Debate With Arthur Hayes, Nouriel Roubini Criticizes BitMEX Business Practices

Nouriel Roubini might be the biggest crypto-critic on the planet and he continues to do things to hold that title. After a heated debate with Bitmex CEO Arthur Hayes on July 3rd, Dr. Doom wrote an article criticizing both Arthur and his business practices.

Roubini has alleged that BitMEXs recent announcement that its bitcoin derivatives volume had reached $1 billion was fake. He was quoted as saying:

“How can one believe ANY of these figures when 95 percent of all bitcoin transactions on a typical exchange is fake? Fake-coins, shit-coins, fake-transactions, fake-pricing. The only true thing in crypto space is manipulation, pump n dump, front-running, wash trading, etc…”

Crypto shitcoin-land is full of clueless, dumb financially illiterate ignorami who don't even get it when you make fun of them. No wonder as their heads are clogged into stinking cesspools of 1000s shitcoins that already lost 99% of their value since peak. https://t.co/RL9pzsRPJ6

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) July 16, 2019

In the new article for Project Syndicate, Roubini writes:

“Some of the biggest crypto players may be openly involved in systematic illegality. Consider BitMEX, an unregulated trillion-dollar exchange of crypto derivatives that are domiciled in Seychelles but active globally. Its CEO, Arthur Hayes, boasted openly that the BitMEX business model involves peddling to “degenerate gamblers” crypto derivatives with 100-to-one leverage.”

He says that BitMEX is involved in money laundering services on a daily basis:

“BitMEX insiders revealed to me that this exchange is also used daily for money laundering on a massive scale by terrorists and other criminals from Russia, Iran, and elsewhere; the exchange does nothing to stop this, as it profits from these transactions. At any rate, we do know that BitMEX skirts AML/KYC regulations. Though it claims not to serve US and UK investors who are subject to such laws, its method of “verifying” their citizenship is to check their IP address, which can easily be masked with a standard VPN application. ”

Roubini seems to be living in his own bubble as the USA is not the only country in the world and others have implemented their own practices of their own.