Last week, Peter Van Valkenburgh and Nouriel Roubini debated about virtual currencies. In a hearing at the U.S. Senate, both experts in their fields talked about the negative and positive aspects of cryptocurrencies. At the same time, they also shared their opinion about blockchain technology.
Cryptocurrencies: Good or Bad?
Nouriel Roubini is a recognized economist known for its prediction of the 2008 financial crisis. Peter Van Valkenburgh is a cryptocurrency lawyer and Director of Research a Coin Center.
Roubini started saying that the crypto space is the ‘mother of all scams.’ As usual, he did not talk positively about virtual currencies. Indeed, he attacked them saying that they are not scalable, are full of scams and aren’t being used more than by criminals.
About blockchain technology, Nouriel Roubini said:
“Blockchain is the most over-hyped technology ever. It is nothing better than a glorified spreadsheet database.”
However, Valkenburgh defended the crypto and blockchain space. He said that Bitcoin works without trusted intermediaries and agreed with some things Roubini said. For example, he accepted that Bitcoin is not widely accepted and that it has issues with its scalability.
Nonetheless, there are different innovations that are being developed to improve Bitcoin. The Lightning Network (LN) would allow it to scale and process millions of transactions without congesting the main network.
Valkenburgh said about bitcoin :
“The mere fact that it works without trusted intermediaries is amazing. It’s a computer science breakthrough, and it will be as significant for freedom, prosperity, and human flourishing, as the birth of the internet.”
At the hearing, Valkenburgh defended virtual currencies from the attacks made by Roubini. For example, Roubini wrote on the document presented before the hearing that Bitcoin transactions paid $55 dollars fees. Clearly, this is not the case now since SegWit adoption has been growing in the last months.
The senators present at the hearing were carefully paying attention about what both had to say. However, they did not seem very involved in the matter. Despite that, according to Jacke Chervinsky, senators were able to make some progress on the matter.
Carlos is an international relations’ analyst specializing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Since 2017, Carlos has written extensively for UseTheBitcoin and other leading cryptocurrency sites; with over 2,000 articles published.
