Nobel Prize Winner Says Cryptocurrencies Should Be Shutdown

Joseph Stiglitz

Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently said on CNBC that cryptocurrencies should be shut down. What a statist!

I am no fan of cryptocurrencies but if people want to use them, I have no problem with that. Though I hear more and more horror stories from people who have bought them.

I was recently visited by a cryptocurrency trader who had his accounts frozen (stolen?) by a cryptocurrency exchange. It was a six-figure loss and he was looking for ideas on how to get the coins released.

From many different angles, cryptocurrencies are just a bad idea but especially the manner in which transactions can be tracked.

It should be noted that while Stiglitz wants cryptocurrencies shut down, he is in favor of a government-controlled electronic money system. In other words, he isn't against the tracking features of  cryptocurrencies, he just wants the quantity of currency to be controllable by the government and the tracking made easier.

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

Electronic money is a statist dream, it would track all, and as a  technocrat for the state, Stiglitz wants this.

-RW