Interview with Laeticia Strauch-Bonart in L’Express (French magazine), translated.
Last year, 2022 was not of much respite for cryptocurrencies. While bitcoin has lost more than 60% of its value, the entire sector is in crisis, punctuated by various bankruptcies such as those of Terra and FTX. The phenomenon is the consequence, according to scholar and former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb, of the low-interest rate “Disneyland” economy in which we have been living for fifteen years. A “cluster” was formed: Pro-putin, climate and Covid deniers, carnivores, and crypto culties, that Taleb, a former crypto hopeful but a fierce opponent since 2021, has decided to attack head-on.
L’Express: As early as 2021, you warned about the inability of bitcoin to play the role of a real currency. Prophetic remarks…
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: My point in the article I published in 2021 nicknamed “the bitcoin black paper” was that in its current version, despite the hype around it, bitcoin had not managed to satisfy the notion of “currency without government” and that it even turned out to be not a currency at all. It is because it can be neither a short-term nor long-term store of value, cannot function as a reliable cover against inflation and, worse than anything, it does not remotely constitute a shield against…
