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Nicholas Weaver calls crypto a virus in an interview with Current Affairs and says Bitcoin should burn.
Key points
- Senior academic says Bitcoin doesn’t work as a payment, is incredibly damaging for the environment, and only serves criminal activity.
- However, Bitcoin believers argue it has value as more than a form of payment and that criminal activity on the blockchain can be traced.
A recent Current Affairs interview with Nicholas Weaver, senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and lecturer in the computer science department at UC Berkeley, is a visceral take down of Bitcoin (BTC) and the cryptocurrency industry.
In the interview, Weaver calls the president of El Salvador a “totalitarian nutcase” and says “the cryptocurrency space itself has the object permanence of a horny mayfly.” He finishes by saying: “It’s time to really think about burning it down. Now I just want to take the entire cryptocurrency space and throw it into the sun.”
The interview is a great read and highlights a number of reasons for investor caution. But how many of his arguments really hold water? We broke down a couple of his main points and examined them in more…
