Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, believes the popular cryptocurrency may not be “viable”. "So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed. It doesn’t serve any socially useful function."
In an interview on Bloomberg, economist Joseph Stiglitz was asked if Bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency, could be "viable" if it were regulated. Stiglitz pointed out that "one of the main functions of government is to create currency." He explained that Bitcoin is "successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight," referencing the fact that, as a cryptocurrency, the distribution of Bitcoin is decentralized with no central bank to mint or manage the currency.
"It’s a bubble that’s going to give a lot of people a lot of exciting times as it rides up and then goes down," Sitglitz told Bloomberg News.
He added, "so it seems to me it ought to be outlawed. It doesn’t serve any socially useful function."
"The value of a Bitcoin today is expectations of what the Bitcoin is going to be tomorrow," Stiglitz said.
But Stiglitz did argue that "the medium of exchange that we use for transaction" should be brought up to date. "Let's move away from paper, into the 21st century of a digital economy," he said.