2018-11-14 10:36 |
Dr. Doom has attacked again and we are not talking about Marvel Comics here. Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the 2008 financial crisis (and got the Dr. Doom nickname for it), has recently started to attack his favorite subject lately: the crypto market.
Anyone in the market for a long time knows that Roubini hates cryptos and that he is very bearish on them. Now, he has struck again by affirming that cryptocurrencies are not as anonymous as most people think while retweeting a Coindesk article that talks about how non-private Ethereum is.
So much for privacy, anonymity & censorship resistance: there is NO anonymity in crypto. Law enforcement authorities prefer transactions on crypto because it is easier to trace transactions & who is behind them than in banks. Wake up crypto zealots. & Feds will crack Monero too https://t.co/tDGKf1ggFO
— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 11, 2018
The article affirms that Ethereum is even able to reveal the location of the user. It was published after Peter Szilagyi, a core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, has stressed “complex and unpredictable” information can be exposed via the blockchain and that users should be cautious.
Nouriel Roubini had his chance to nitpick at cryptos, then, affirming that there is no anonymity in cryptos and that they are simply not resistant against censorship. In fact, he says that the authorities prefer when people use cryptos for illegal activities because it is easier to trace them as the blockchains store all the information in a public ledger.
Banks, on the other hands, protect clients most of the time.
Dr Doom Has A Track Record Of Crypto HateThis is far from the first time that Roubini, AKA Dr Doom, has shown his hate towards cryptocurrencies. The man is considerably against cryptocurrencies and he has no shame of showing it.
While some of his arguments are pretty solid, like the fact that, yes, Ethereum is easy to track if you have the right tools and a lot of people are basically fooled into believing that cryptos grant them full anonymity, sometimes it looks like he just gets off on pissing crypto fans on the internet.
Also, he is having a sort of a war with the Ethereum Foundation as he compared Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum and the main public figure of the token, as a dictator when he affirmed that cryptos had less decentralization than North Korea.
People Were Irritated After TweetsObviously, people were clearly pissed. It happens every single time on the internet. Some people answered his tweet affirming that this is the reason why cryptos can be so good against corruption, especially in the public sphere. Others accused him of having an antiquated view of cryptos in which only criminals use it.
There were also the traditional “he clearly has a kind of agenda” and “go educate yourself” comments, and some people which affirmed that the feds actually want crypto to succeed and that he is misunderstanding the whole thing.
Will Monero Be Cracked?Roubini and his hate apart, will Monero actually be cracked? He does not show any proof that this will happen and Monero has a solid technology, so there is definitely a case for saying he’s wrong, but that would not be a very sensible position.
Monero is not magic. There is a chance that it can be cracked and we have seen enough examples that cryptos are not without their failures. At the end of the day, though, what’s the point if you are not doing something that could be considered a crime?
Even if Monero is cracked some day, you do not have anything to worry unless the government has a reason for going after you like tax evasion or if you buying or selling illegal goods. The answer is: just don’t do it and it’s fine.
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