Nobel Prize Winning Economist Mistakenly Suggests Cryptocurrencies Should Be Shut Down

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Suggests That Cryptocurrencies Should Be Shut Down

According to the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz has been very outspoken on the application of virtual currencies and online payments. But he has successfully managed to divide opinions online and offline with his statements about conduct towards cryptocurrencies.

“I’ve been a great advocate of moving to an electronic payments mechanism.”

Stiglitz comments, arguing that shutting down cryptocurrencies, the decentralized solutions to cross border payments. His reasoning? That decentralized payments secured by blockchain would allow for the prevalence of illicit and illegal spending activities (spoken without irony).

“There are a lot of efficiencies. I think we can actually have a better-regulated economy if we had all the data in real time, knowing what people are spending.”

The irony, of course, comes from the fact that these same ‘monitored' and ‘regulated' financial institutions have recently undergone a wave of legal proceedings due to their laundering activities (Deutsche Banke) and ‘rigging' of prices for anything from Gold, Silver, Oil and even Foreign Exchange of currencies.

He still sees the value in these kinds of digital payments solutions but fails to see the irony of his statements that a centralized system is more trustworthy than a decentralized, peer-to-peer solution. Well,  Cryptocurrencies are not without their foibles, and we as a community of crypto supporters must stand tall enough to concede to that effect. But the activities of crypto-assets in illegality is a pebble in the ocean relative to Banking and major financial institutions.

But not all economic prizes are created equal – how much does he know about cross border solutions like cryptocurrencies? Stiglitz won his prize back in 2001, along with Michael Spence and George Akelof. But even if the rhetoric among some old-guard economists is to ‘shut down' cryptocurrencies, how on earth do they intend to do that exactly?