Recognized economist Nouriel Roubini, a professor at Stern School and NYU, recently launched a series of attacks against the crypto sector.
All of the False Claims Roubini Made
He claimed Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin amassed a wealth of a billion dollars by creating a pre-mined blockchain network, and said public blockchain protocols are unusable due to $60 fees — all of which are completely false.
Buterin disclosed that he had never held more than 0.9 percent of Ethereum’s total supply and had nowhere close to a billion dollars. Bitcoin fee is estimated to be around $0.1 according to Blockchain, not $60.
First claim: Bitcoin transaction fee is $60
Absurdly, Roubini decided to utilize a narrative that Bitcoin’s transaction fee is $60 and to pay for products of less value such as a cup of coffee, it costs upwards of $63.
For instance, Roubini stated that to purchase a Starbucks latte, which costs $2.9, one would have to pay $63 to buy with BTC.
However, the transaction fee of BTC is publicly available and verifiable data, which can be easily refuted. Hence, as Blocktower co-founder Ari Paul said, it remains unclear why Roubini led his criticism against crypto with a piece of information that can be refuted by anyone with ease.
“BTC fees are less than $0.10, easily verifiable. If you value truth, you’d provide a public correction. If your goal is to mislead people with simply false statements, carry on. There’s nothing to research. Fees are publicly viewable from many sources (googling it works.) I find it better not to provide a specific source because then regardless of source, the source gets attacked,” Paul said.
More importantly, an investor of BTC recently moved 29,999 BTC worth $194 million on the Bitcoin blockchain with a fee of $0.1. With legacy systems, it costs over a hundred thousand dollars to move an amount that is larger than $10 million.
Second claim: Crypto is printed out of nowhere
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many public blockchain protocols utilize a consensus algorithm called Proof of Work (PoW), which requires miners to verify transactions and generate cryptocurrencies with a large amount of energy and hardware costs.
Currently, at the price of $6,500, BTC mining is nearly at a breakeven level, which means miners are generating BTC without any profit by foreseeing an increase in the value of the BTC in the long-term.
Hence, the claim that crypto can be printed out of nowhere is false as miners need to cover significant expenses required to maintain a blockchain network.